The Jane Austen Book Club Part 2

"And delicious," Tony said. "I like that way of cooking them."

He was an idiot, Jocelyn decided. They were all idiots. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" she asked her mother. "Errands to run? A life?"

She watched her mother's face fall. She had never thought about that phrase before, but it was exactly right. Everything slid downward.

Her mother put out her cigarette. "I do, actually." She turned in the general direction of Daniel and Sylvia. "Thanks for letting me tag along, kids. Daniel, you'll bring Jocelyn home for me?" She packed up the picnic things and left.

"That was kind of mean, Jocelyn," Daniel said. "After she cooked all that food and all."

"Bits of dead bird. Dead bird legs. It just bugged me that she wouldn't admit it. You know how she is, Sylvia." Jocelyn turned, but Sylvia wasn't even meeting her eyes. "She always has to put such a gloss on everything. She still thinks I'm four years old."

Pridey had forgiven her for the robin. He chewed through Jocelyn's shoelace as a gesture of forgiving and forgetting; he was so fast Jocelyn hadn't noticed it was happening. She had to limp to Daniel's car in order to keep the shoe on.

We are not the saints that dogs are, but mothers are expected to come a close second. "That was fun,"

was the only thing Joce-lyn's mother ever said to her about the afternoon. "You have such nice friends."

Daniel drove her home, Pridey standing on her lap with his little paws barely reaching the window, his breath making a small, sticky cloud on the back of Jocelyn's hand. She was sorry now for having been rude to her mother. She loved her mother. She loved her mother's chicken fried with bacon strips. The guilt she was feeling over Tony was coming to a boil, and the easiest thing in the world would have been to start to cry. The hardest thing would have been to stop.

"The thing is," Daniel said, "that I really like Sylvia. I'm sorry, Jocelyn." The words came from a distance, like something that had been said several days before and was just now sinking in. "She feels terrible about it." Daniel came to a standstill at an empty intersection. He drove so carefully andresponsibly. "She can hardly face you. We both feel terrible about it. We don't know what to do."

The next day at school, Daniel was Sylvia's boyfriend and Tony was Jocelyn's. It was much talked of in the halls. Jocelyn had made no objection, because if she went along, it would be the first time in the history of the world that such a rearrangement suited all parties equally, and also because she wasn't in love with Daniel. Now that she thought about it, Daniel really was per-fectly suited to Sylvia. Sylvia needed someone more serious than Tony. Someone who would calm her down on those occasions when she saw that the world was too awful to live in. Someone who wouldn't spend an afternoon kissing her best friend.

Besides, Tony had given her Pridey. And kissing Tony hadn't been too foul. It probably would be worse, though, without the rain and the steam and the guilt. Jocelyn had figured out enough about the way things worked to knowthat.

What makes me unhappiest aboutEmma," said Allegra, "are the cla.s.s issues about her friend Harriet. In the end, Emma, the new, improved Emma, the chastened Emma, understands that Har-net wasn't good enough to marry the odious Elton after all. When there was some hope that her natural father was a gentle-man, she would have been, but once it's established that he was in trade, then Harriet is lucky to get a farmer."

It was now late enough that the heaters never cycled off. They hummed and puffed, and those of us seated next to them were too hot, the rest too cold. No coffee remained but the nasty bits at the bottoms of the cups, and the creme de menthe squares were gone-clear signs that the evening was coming to an end. Some of us had headaches.

"The cla.s.s stuff inEmma is complicated." Bernadette was set-tled back in her chair, her belly mounding under her dress, her feet tucked up like a girl's. She had taken yoga for years and could put her feet into some astonishing places. "First, there's the fact of Harriet's illegitimacy, about which Austen seems quite liberal."

She was by no means finished, but Allegra interrupted. "She says it's a stain if unbleached by n.o.bility or wealth." We had just begun to suspect that Allegra might not like Austen as much as the rest of us. So far it was only a suspicion; nothing she'd said had been unfair. We were keeping watch, buthoni soit qui mal y pense.

"I think Jane is being ironic there," Prudie suggested. She was next to a heater. Her pale, polished cheeks were delicately flushed. "She has an ironic wit, I think some readers miss that. I'm often ironic myself; especially in e-mail. Sometimes my friends ask, Was that a joke?"

"Was that a joke?" Allegra asked.

Bernadette went steadily on. "Then there's the case of Robert Martin. Surely we're intended to take Mr. Knightley's side on the question of Robert Martin. Only a farmer, but at the end Emma says it will be a great pleasure to get to know him."

"We all have a sense of level," said Jocelyn. "It may not be based on cla.s.s exactly anymore, but we still have a sense of what we re ent.i.tled to. People pick partners who are nearly their equal in looks. Thepretty marry the pretty, the ugly the ugly." She paused. "To the detriment of the breed."

"Was that a joke?" Prudie asked.

Sylvia had spoken very little all night and Jocelyn was worried about it. "What should we read next?"

Jocelyn asked her. "You pick."

"I'm in the mood forSense and Sensibility."

"I love that one," Bernadette said. "It's maybe my favourite, except forPride and Prejudice. Though I loveEmma. I always forget how much until I reread it. My very favourite bit is about the strawberries.

Mrs. Elton in her hat, with her basket." She thumbed through the pages. The relevant corner had been folded back, but so had several other corners; it was little help. "Here we have it," she said. "'Mrs. Elton, in all her apparatus of happiness, her large bonnet and her basket, was very ready.... Strawberries, and only strawberries, could now be thought or spoken of... "delicious fruit-only too rich to be eaten much of-inferior to cherries ..

Bernadette read us the whole thing. It was a wonderful pas-sage, though quite long when done aloud.

Jocelyn's relationship with Tony lasted into their senior year, and its end was unfortunately timed so as to make her miss the Winter Ball. She'd already bought a dress, a tiered, lacy, off-the-shoulder silver thing that she loved so much she would have made things go another couple of weeks if she'd been able. But by then every word he said was an irritation to her, and he did in-sist on continuing to talk.

Three years later Sylvia and Daniel married, and it was a for-ma1affair, not quite their style. Jocelyn always suspected it had been planned that way so she would finally have a place to wear her dress. She brought a date, one in a series of boyfriends and lasting no longer than the others, but immortalized in the wed-ding pictures-raising his gla.s.s, standing with his arm around Jocelyn, seated at a table with Jocelyn's mother, the two of them deep in serious conversation.

Sylvia and Jocelyn were in college now, and they joined a consciousness-raising group that met on campus, second floor of the International House. At their third meeting, Jocelyn spoke about the summer of Mike and Steven. She hadn't meant to take a great deal of time with it, but she'd never told anyone, not even Sylvia, much about the night of the dance. She found herself cry-ing all through the telling. She'd forgotten, until she was in the midst of it, how Bryan had looked at her to be sure she was watching, and then stuck his finger into his mouth and pulledit out.

The other women were outraged on her behalf. She'd been raped, some of them argued. It was a shame no charges had been pressed.

A shame. After the initial relief; now that the story existed in the open air and could be looked at, what Jocelyn noticed most was how unresisting she'd been. She saw, as if from above, her own inert body in the strapless dress and thin cardigan, reclining on the lounge chair. The suggestion that Bryan should have been made to face some consequences came at her like an accusation. She should have done something.

Why hadn't she put up a fight? The whole time Bryan was fingering her, she was still hoping to win his good opinion! No one else blamed her. Culturally programmed pa.s.sivity, they said. The fairy-tale-princess imperative.

But Jocelyn grew more and more humiliated. There were two women in the group who reallyhad been raped, one of them by her own husband and repeatedly. Jocelyn felt she'd made a big deal over nothing.

With her silence, she'd given Bryan a power he didn't deserve. She wasn't about to let some frat-boy a.s.shole have a thing to say about who she was.

Who was she?

"What's wrong with me?" she asked Sylvia later. It wasn't a question for the group. "The simplest thing.

Falling in love. Falling. Why can't I do that?"

"You love dogs."

Jocelyn waved that angrily away. "It doesn't count. That's too easy. Hitler did that."

She didn't go back to a fourth evening. Raising her conscious-ness had turned out to be one more thing that left her feeling ashamed, and she was done with feeling ashamed.

Daniel became a lobbyist in Sacramento, for an Indian tribe, a wild-river group, and the j.a.panese government. He was urged, from time to time, to run for office, but this was easily resisted. Politics, he said, was a foot-to-mouth occupation. Sylvia worked at the state library, in the California History Room.

Jocelyn man-aged accounts at a small vineyard; her own dog kennel was still some years in her future and would never provide for her com-plete support. Pridey lived to be sixteen, and his last day on earth, it was Sylvia and Daniel who took off work to drive him to the vet with Jocelyn. They sat with her on the speck of gra.s.s outside the office, where Jocelyn held him while he died. Then they all sat in the car together. No one was able to stop crying long enough to see the road home.

How are you doing?" Jocelyn asked Sylvia. They had one minute alone together in the kitchen and a hundred things to say that could not be said in front of Allegra. Allegra was Daniel's dar-ling, his only daughter, and though she'd immediately taken her mother's side and stuck there, it was unnatural and made us all sad.

The kitchen was, of course, beautifully done, with counters of blue and white tile, bra.s.s fixtures, and an antique stove. Sahara sat by the sink, turned to show her fine African profile. After everyone had gone and there was no one to see, Sahara would be given the plates to lick, but this was a secret and Sahara could keep a secret.

Jocelyn was rinsing the gla.s.ses. The water in town was so hard that they got scratched if they were put in the dishwasher, and therefore had to be done by hand.

"Dead woman walking," Sylvia said. "You know how Daniel used to drive me crazy? It turns out I was very happily married, For thirty-two years. I miss him like my heart has been torn from my chest. What are the odds?"

Jocelyn put down a gla.s.s and took Sylvia's cold hands in her own slippery, soapy ones. "I've been very happily unmarried all those same years. Everything is going to be all right." It was oc-curring to her for the first time that she was losing Daniel, too. She'd handed him over, but she'd never given him up. Now, while she was breeding her dogs and dusting her light bulbs and reading her books, he had packed his bags and moved away. "I love you very much," she told Sylvia.

"How could I have let myself forget that most marriages end in divorce?" Sylvia asked. "You don't learnthat in Austen. She always has a wedding or two at the end."

Allegra, Prudie, and Bernadette appeared as she spoke, carry-ing their coffee cups, napkins, plates.

There was something, per-haps created by Sylvia's words, of the bridal procession about.i.t. The way the golden light reflected in the windows. The silence of the fog outside. The women coming, one after another, into the kitchen, with their dirty dishes held before them, until we were all gathered together.

"Le monde est le livre des femmes,"Prudie offered.

Whatever that meant. We could still see her lips, so she might have been perfectly serious, unless it was more of her ironic wit. Either way, we could think of no polite response.

"My dearest, most beloved Sylvia," Jocelyn said. A tiny, lady-like drop of drool plinked from Sahara's mouth to the stone floor. Our forks and spoons slid under the foam of soap in the sink. Al-legra put her arms around her mother and her head on her moth-er's shoulder. "We haven't come to the end yet."

Jocelyn explains the dog show:

The judge generally begins by asking all handlers to gait their dogs around the edge of the ring and then stack them in a line along one side. As the dogs move, the judge stands in the centre, a.s.sessing grace, balance, soundness.

When the dogs are stacked-a pose designed to display the dog to best advantage-the judge conducts a hands-on examination of the bite, depth of chest, spring of ribs, shoulder angulation, coat, and body condition. On males, the judge manually confirms two t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.

After this, the handlers gait their dogs again, each in turn now, first moving away so the judge can evaluate from behind, then coming back so the judge can see from the front. The judge watches for movement faults: Does the dog move true, or do his feet cross over? Is his stride free or tight, easy or restricted? In the final stages, the judge may ask competing handlers to gait two at a time so a direct comparison can be made, before selecting a winner.

The dog show emphasizes bloodline, appearance, and comportment, but money and breeding are never far from anyone's mind.

April

CHAPTER TWO

in which we read Sense and Sensibility with Allegra

Apartial list of things not found in the books of Jane Austen:

locked-room murders punishing kisses girls dressed up as boys (and rarely the reverse) spies serial killers cloaks of invisibility Jungian archetypes, most regrettably, doppelgangers cats

But let's not focus on the negative.

"I don't think there's anything better in all of Austen than those pages where f.a.n.n.y Dashwoodpersuades her husband, step by step by step, not to give his stepmother and sisters any money,"

Bernadette said. She repeated the same point in a vari-ety of unilluminating ways while Allegra listened to the soft percussion of rain on the roof, the windows, and the deck. Bernadette was dressed today in something resembling desert robes, only periwinkle blue. Her hair had been cut, which left it less scope for improvisation, and she looked very nice, which was all the more remarkable for being a bit of magic done without mirrors.

It was cold out, and wet, the way it gets in April just when you've convinced yourself that spring is here.

Winter's last laugh. The book club was circled about the woodstove in Sylvia's huge living room, with the stove door open and the flames wrapped tight about the logs. Overhead, a hundred bird's-eyes in the high bird's-eye-maple ceiling looked down on the little gathering.

Allegra's elbow often ached when it rained, and she rubbed it without noticing she was doing so until she saw her mother look at her, which made her stop and think of something diverting to say. "I like a progression," she agreed. "Repet.i.tion is tedious"- this aimed at Bernadette, but Allegra wouldn't have said it if Bernadette had been likely to get it-"because there's no direc-tion to it. I especially like a progression that turns things com-pletely over. Takes you pole to pole."

Allegra was a creature of extremes-either stuffed or starv-ing, freezing or boiling, exhausted or electric with energy. She'd moved back home the month before, when her father had moved out. Jocelyn looked at Allegra approvingly. She was a very good daughter. Sylvia would have been very lonely there without her.

No one could be lonely with Allegra in the house. Such a vivacious presence, her company must be a great comfort. Ex-cept that-really Jocelyn didn't wish to even be thinking this- Allegra, well, she felt things very deeply. It was one of her de-lightful qualities; she wept with those who wept.

Sylvia's boys could be very comforting, too, especially Diego. Andy couldn't manage a sustained sympathy, though he was good for an hour or two. It was too bad Diego couldn't come. Of course, he couldn't; he had a job and his family. But Diego would have cheered Sylvia up. While Allegra sometimes felt things so deeply you ended up consoling her even when the tragedy was entirely your own.

Jocelyn imagined Sylvia compelled to put a good face on things for Allegra's sake. To have to appear happy when she was so miserable. Who would require it? She imagined Sylvia mak-ing Allegra soups and running her baths, Allegra collapsed on the couch, tucked up in shawls and plied with tea. Really, it seemed too much, that Sylvia should be caring for Allegra at such a time. A surrept.i.tious look at the CD cases scattered about the player told Jocelyn that someone had been indulging in a good wallow, and this someone was not Sylvia, not unless she'd developed a sudden taste for Fiona Apple. How could Allegra be so selfish?

But then, she'd always been a difficult child. Beautiful, beyond a doubt. She had Sylvia's dark eyes and Daniel's bright hair, her face the best possible combination of the two, her figure like Sylvia's, but s.e.xier.

Yet none of her parents' steadiness or placid-ity. When happy, she was uncontrollable, when sad, inconsolable, until she changed-fast as a finger snap-long after you'd given up. Sylvia had a repertoire of tricks that had worked on the boys when they were little. "If you were a dog I'd cheer you up by rub-bing you behind your ears," she'd say, rubbing as described. "If you were a cat, I'd scratch under your chin," scratching. "If you were a horse, I'd pet your nose. If you were a bird, I'd stroke your stomach"-doing so-"but since"-quickly lifting his shirt-you re a boy -she would blow wet, loud blasts of air onto his belly until he was gasping with laughter. This same scene would send Allegra into afury.

One day when she was four years old, while leafing through Sylvia's beauty magazines, Allegra had taken offence at how much white s.p.a.ce she found. "I don't like white," she'd said. "It's so plain." She burst into tears. "It's so plain and there's so much of it." She sat for more than an hour, sobbing, working her way through the pages, colouring in the whites of people's eyes, their teeth, the s.p.a.ces between paragraphs, the frames around ads. She was sobbing because she could see that she would never be done; her whole life would be used up in the hopeless, endless task of amending this single lapse in taste.

She would grow old, and there would still be white sheets, white walls, her own white hair.

White snow. "The whole beginning sequence has something of the fairy tale about it," Grigg said. "With a lovely twist. Once upon a time, after the death of her beloved husband, a gentle stepmother was forced to live in a house ruled by her wicked stepdaughter."

Allegra was sort of our hostess this month, but it was Sylvia's house and Sylvia's food, so it was sort of Sylvia. In this role, what-ever role this was, Sylvia was determined to treat Grigg well to-day. He'd been the last to arrive, which had made her wonder whether he was coming, and therefore all the more pleased when he showed. Bernadette would never forgive them if he left early again. He had just made a very interesting point.

"Such an interesting point," said Sylvia. "In fact, in a society where money pa.s.ses to the eldest son, this can't have been an un-usual case? But how often does it appear in books? The problems of older women don't interest most writers. Trust Miss Austen!"

"But the book isn't really so much about Mrs. Dashwood as about the young, beautiful daughters,"

Prudie pointed out. She had come straight from a meeting of the teachers' union and was, therefore, uncommonly lipsticked and politicized. Her eye-brows had grown back in a bit, or else she'd painted over the de-ficiency; that was a relief, but the voice she was using was a public-speaking voice and that was an aggravation. It was, Sylvia supposed, an occupational hazard, more to be pitied, and so on. Her articulation would surely become more normal as the evening progressed. "Once it actually gets going.

Colonel Bran-don's not much younger than Mrs. Dashwood, but he falls in love with her youngest daughter, never her. An older man can still fall in love. An older woman better not.

Prudie had spoken without thinking, but the thinking came rapidly behind. What a faux pas she'd just made, though, in jus-tice, she felt that she wasn't the sort who often stumbled that way. Of course, this only made it more obvious when she did. Rumour had it that Daniel was seeing someone, had, in fact, left Sylvia not because the marriage had gone bad, but because he'd been hit by the thunderbolt. Prudie looked for something to add that would make it clear she hadn't been speaking of Sylvia, though, hon-estly, not that Sylvia wasn't attractive enough for her age, but what could her prospects be at fifty-whatever?