The Jane Austen Book Club Part 13

"This whole event puts me in mind of my first husband," she said. "John was a politician, so I know from fund-raisers! Comb your hair, dear, wash your face, and here's a list of things you can say if anyone tries to talk with you: "One: What a lovely event this is.

"Two: Isn't the food delicious?

"Three: Aren't the flowers beautiful?

"Four: Isn't my husband the best man for the job? Let's all be quiet now and listen to him talk! I myself am going to smile like an idiot the whole time he's speaking."

Even without music the room was noisy enough, the table big enough to make conversation across it difficult. Bernadette could see that Mr. Bellington wasn't planning to try. He spoke to Dean. "If you have any questions about my books," he said, "that's what I'm here for. Content? Process? Where do I get my ideas? The word 'last' inLast Harvest is kind of a pun. 'Last' as in 'final,' but also 'last' as in 'most recent.' Ask me anything."

There was something pompous, self-important in his delivery. Bernadette had just met him and already she was liking him less. The first course arrived, a lovely mushroom soup with maybe a dash of sherry.

"This is delicious," Mr. Bellington said. "Well done."

He directed his words toward Bernadette. What was that about? Did he think she'd made the soup?

"Do you love Jane Austen?" she asked. There was only one possible answer to the question. She would like to think that any man who wrote would get it right. She spoke loudly to lessen the risk of being ignored, and repeated her question just in case. "What do you think of Jane Austen, Mr. Bellington?" "Great marketing. I envy her the movie deals. Call me Mo."

"Which of her books is your favourite?" Prudie smiled in that unhappy way that made her lips disappear.

"I liked the movie with Elizabeth Taylor."

Prudie's hand had become unsteady. Bernadette saw the tremor in her b.l.o.o.d.y Mary. "Your favourite Jane Austen isNational Velvet?"

Prudie was being mean. Bernadette resolved to stop her. Soon. Meanwhile, it was good to see her putting up a fight. Not five minutes earlier her mother's death had been painted across her face like one of those shattered women Pica.s.so was so fond of. Now she looked dangerous. Now Pica.s.so would be excusing himself, recollecting a previous engagement, backing away, leav-ing the building.

Dean coughed helpfully. Somewhere in the cough was the word "persuasion." He was throwing Mo a lifeline.

Mo preferred to go down. "I haven't actually read any Austen. I'm more into mysteries, crime fiction, courtroom stuff." This was disappointing, but not d.a.m.ning. On the one hand it was a failing; on the other, manfully owned up to. If only Mo had stopped there.

"I don't read much women's stuff. I like a good plot," he said.

Prudie finished her drink and set the gla.s.s down so hard you could hear it hit. "Austen can plot like a son of a b.i.t.c.h," she said. "Bernadette, I believe you were telling us about your first husband."

"I could start with my second. Or the one after that," Bernadette offered. Down with plot! Down with Mo!

Dancing master Wilson complained about certain figures, such as "lead down the middle and up again or lead out to the wall and back," noting that they were angular and dull. "Straight lines," he said, "are useful, but not elegant; and, when applied to the Human Figure, are productive of an extremely ungraceful effect."

"Start with the politician," Prudie said. "We'll get to the oth-ers. We have the whole evening."

Bernadette loved to be asked to tell a story. She settled in for a long one. Anything for Prudie. "His name was John Andretti. He grew up in Atherton."

John made the best first impression. He had an instant charm; you were the most fascinating person in the room. Until someone else caught his eye.

I met him up at Clear Lake, where we were tapping on the Fourth of July. It was my last year with thePeppers and we weren't the Little Peppers anymore, because we were kind of grown-up for that. We were the Red-Hot Peppers by then. And I was the shortest. I was the last stair, even though I was nineteen years old.

My family was supposed to go to Hawaii for three whole weeks that summer. I was so looking forward to it. But my father felt he couldn't leave his patients for that long, and so it was a trailer instead of a bungalow, a lake instead of the ocean. One d.a.m.n tap dance after another. Madame Dubois had us all in polka dots that year. There was a flamenco craze. Going on in her brain.

Dad came with us, because he loved to fish. There was mer-cury in Clear Lake, from the old mines, but we didn't think about that at all then. Now they tell you to only eat one fish from that lake a month, and this after years of cleanup. I didn't like fish, so I would pick at my plate, even though Mother was always nagging us to eat it. She used to call fish "brain food," which is what we all thought back then. Now I read how they're putting warning labels on tuna. But eggs are good again. You have your good fats and your bad fats.

I once bit the end off a thermometer just to see if I could. Turned out to be dead easy. I spit the mercury right out, but Mother was so upset she gave me ipecac anyway. Then there she was all those years later, trying to get me to eat those fish.

I went swimming a lot, which was probably no better for me. I'd just learned to water-ski. So I was out on the lake one day, and John cut too close with his boat and upended me in his wake. Steered round to apologize and picked me up, shouting to my fa-ther how he'd take me in to sh.o.r.e. He used to say that he'd landed me like a fish. You're the littlest thing I ever pulled out of the water, he used to tell me. I should have been made to throw you back.

He was a good politician, at least as far as the getting elected went. He remembered people's names, and not just their names, but the names of their wives, husbands, children. He had a nar-rative line.

Bernadette nodded politely to Mo. "People don't always real-ize how important that is in running an election. The voting public likes a good plot. Something simple."

John's was a cla.s.sic. Or else it was a cliche He was born real poor, and he made sure you knew that straight off. His speeches were all about his hardscrabble background-the obstacles over-come, the disappointments survived. The pledges he'd made to himself when discouraged. As G.o.d is my witness, I'll never be hungry again. Brave stuff.

With just a hint of some old betrayal. This was the genius part. Nothing too specific, but the clear implication that he was too good to give you the details. Not one to tell tales and all. Not one to hold a grudge. You had to admire him for his generosity as well as his determination.

In truth he was the angriest man alive. He kept a list of insults. I mean an actual list, and there were items on it that went back twenty years. There was this boy named Ben Weinberg. They'd gone to school together; John's father worked for Ben's father. Ben had brains, friends, athletic ability, and lots of old money. The best of everything. John had to struggle so to get one-tenth of what was just handed to Ben.

In the story of John's life ac-cording to John, John was Oliver Twist and Ben was Little Lord Fauntleroy. One day when John was sixteen Ben called him a nasty little climber, and there it was, twenty years later, number three on John's list. His mother had places one and two.

"So easy not to be a climber when you're born on top," John said. We were married by then, and I was starting to get a clue. Before that I bought it all. I didn't see the list until I made my first appearance on it.

I was certainly no judge of character back then.

I hope I've learned a thing or two since. No one with real integrity tries to sell their integrity to you.

People with real in-tegrity hardly notice they have it. You see a campaign that fo-cuses on character, rect.i.tude, probity, and that's exactly when you should start asking yourself, What's this guy trying to hide?

But, there you go. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, just as they say.

"Tout le monde est sage apres le coup,"Prudie said.

"Yes, dear," Bernadette answered.

After Lloyd and Mattie left to get married, Madame Dubois said we couldn't any of us date anymore, as it was bad for the act if we got reputations. We were to remember we were ladies. So John and I snuck around, and finally I left my dancing shoes be-hind and we ran off and got married in Vegas at the Wee Kirk o' the Heather. There was the nicest woman working there, Cyn-thia something-or-other. I remember she said she'd been a clerk at Woolworth before this job, and she missed the free fabric ends she used to get. Isn't it funny, the things you remember? The chapel had some dresses, and I tried them all on, but they were too big for me. I really was the tiniest thing back then, couldn't fit into anything off the rack.

So Cynthia altered a skirt for me right on the spot, and she combed my hair and did my makeup. There were a few couples ahead of us; we had a bit of a wait. She gave me a cigarette. I never smoked in my life but just this one time-the occasion seemed to call for it. Cynthia pointed out how now I was going to be Nettie Andretti; I'd never even thought of that. I was going by Nettie then. That's the day I began using my full name, Bernadette.

While she did my hair, Cynthia told me this story-how there was a curse on her family because her grandpa had once hit a pure white cat with his car. He said it was an accident, but it probably wasn't, because ever since, whenever anyone in the family was about to die, they saw a white cat. Her uncle saw a white cat from his bedroom window when he was only twenty-six. It streaked through the yard, grabbed one of his socks from the clothesline, and made off over the fence with it. And then he went out that very night with some friends and got killed in a bar fight by someone who thought he was someone else. They never did find that sock.

Cynthia was in the middle of telling me this. She had just said how her mother said she didn't believe in any of that nonsense and to prove it went out and bought herself a white cat. I know something weird happened next, because of the way Cynthia was telling it, but I never heard what. John and I were called just then and I had to go get married. I was in a bad mood when I said my vows, because I wanted to hear the end of the white cat story. I've always wondered how that ended. The year before I met John, Mattie had begged me to come and visit her and Lloyd. He'd gotten religion, and they were liv-ing in a commune on this ranch in Colorado. Mother was so an-gry to think I might have married Lloyd with just a little effort, since he really had been sweet on me first. And now he'd turned out so spiritual. Really, she was very middle-cla.s.s. She should have known there'd be nothing respectable about the truly righ-teous. She packed my clothes like I was off for four weeks of Bible study.

The commune was run by a Reverend Watson. I thought he was a megalomaniac. Lloyd thought he was attentive. Lloyd al-ways had liked being told what to do.

I don't think Reverend Watson had any religious training at all. His inspiration was the Latter Rain sect, but he cut and pasted as suited him. He preached that the trappings of the occult-things like zodiac signs and numerology-had been stolen from G.o.d by the devil and it was up to him to wrest them away, put them back to their holy purposes. And there was some-thing about extraterrestrials, too; I forget exactly what. They were coming to get us, or they'd already been and left us behind. One of those two.

While I was visiting, he had them all reading a book calledAtomic Power with G.o.d, Through Fasting and Prayer, which said that if you could learn to control your appet.i.tes you'd gain super-natural powers.

You'd be released from gravity. You'd be im-mortal. So Reverend Watson said we were all to fast and be celibate. They mostly served boxty, because it was cheap, so the fasting was sort of redundant, and the celibacy was nothing to me, but Mattie minded. No one in the community drew a steady pay check.

G.o.d was to provide. I would have called my parents to come and get me, but the phones had all been turned off.

The minute Lloyd heard immortality was possible, then im-mortality was what he wanted. Every day that pa.s.sed without him floating up to heaven was a great disappointment to him. To Reverend Watson, too, and Lloyd minded the reverend's dis-appointment more than he minded his own.

They were all trying to pull me in, even Mattie. I didn't blame her; I just thought she needed rescuing.

One day Lloyd asked me to work the Ouija board with him. He was so disheartened. He still couldn't fly and the spirits weren't talking to him, though they were quick enough to send messages to the rest of the con-gregation. I was sorry to see him so down, and fed up with things in general. I mean, my father was in the Masons and I was queen of Job's Daughters one year. We went to church. I sang in the choir. But I hadn't lost my mind over it.

So I pushed the planchette.Leave Watson, I made it say. Lloyd leapt up so fast he knocked his own chair over. He went straight to Reverend Watson and told him Satan was striding amongst us, and Reverend Watson came right back to cast him out. There was a tremendous to-do and I was sort of pleased, because things were less boring than before, but Reverend Watson's eye fell on me then and it was a suspicious eye.

There were only four women in his congregation, and we be-gan to hear a lot about Eve. None of it good. Reverend Watson believed that Eve had done a whole lot more than speak to the serpent in Eden.

He believed she'd slept with it. True believers were descended from Adam and Eve, he told us, and then, look-ing straight at me, unbelievers from Eve and the snake. And since Adam's downfall was to listen to Eve, the women were now forbidden to speak. All the evil in the world, Reverend Watson said, came from listening to a woman's voice.

Mattie was afraid to go against Reverend Watson. There I was, her guest for four weeks and I could only talk if there was no one to hear me, which certainly misses some of the point of talking. But then Reverend Watson went to a conference in Boston, and when he came back, we were allowed to speakagain, as he had a new plan for transcending the mundane plane of our earthly lives. The new plan involved psychotomimetics. Latter Rain with LSD. Acid Rain.

Lloyd was high for days. He finally had some visions of his own. He saw that hecould fly, but just didn't want to. What do I have to prove? he asked. I took it myself. It made me so happy. Everything around me danced. Pots. Fenceposts. Goats.

I saw it all from somewhere above, as if life were one big Busby Berkeley number. We were on the ranch, very isolated from the outside world. It was winter. Hundreds of crows gath-ered in the trees outside the kitchen. There were so many it looked as if the trees had leafed all in black. I went outside and they swam up in elaborate patterns, like words inked on the air. They settled down again, cawing at me. "Go," they said. "Go. Go. Go."

"I just love crows." Bernadette looked at Mo. "I hope you put lots of crows in your books. I bet they flock around the sugar-beet fields. Especially when bodies are being unearthed. You could have crows who find clues. There's a bunch now, nesting in the parking lot of the University Mall. I see them when I go to get my hair cut."

"I sort of do that, only with magpies," Mo said. "Magpies really represent the Valley to me. One reviewer said I had a mag-pie motif. I use them for portent as well as theme. I could explain how I do that."

"If only we were talking about magpies," Prudie said firmly. "Go on, Bernadette."

Well, it seemed to me if a crow told you to do something you should do it. I left without even changing my clothes. I walked right off the ranch. It was miles and miles to a road with any traf-fic, and it rained before I was halfway there. Great gobs of rain, so thick I could hardly see through.

My shoes were covered with mud, as if I was wearing shoes on my shoes. I remember thinking that was a real profound thing to think. The mud would break apart and re-form while I walked. Made my feet so heavy, it seemed like I was walking forever. Of course I probably didn't go in a straight line. Not as the crow flies.

By the time I finally reached the highway I'd sobered up. Hitched a ride with a man about my father's age. Mr. Tybald Parker. He was shocked by my appearance. And he scolded me for hitching, said it was a dangerous thing for a woman to do. He gave me his handkerchief.

I told him everything-not just Mattie and Lloyd and Rev-erend Watson, but everything I could think of.

The Peppers. Dad's dental practice. It was so nice to talk freely again; I never stopped to think what I should say and what I shouldn't. It was such relief.

He got me a hotel room so I could shower and sleep, and he bought me a meal with no potatoes in it and helped me call my parents to wire me some money so I could get the bus home. "Don't take any wooden nickels," he told me just before he left. It was the first time since I'd gone to visit Mattie that I felt G.o.d's presence in my life.

I got a Christmas letter from Mr. Parker every year for more than twenty years, until he died. They werewonderful letters, all about people I didn't know, getting degrees, getting married, go-ing on cruises, having babies. I remember how his grandson went to UCLA on a baseball scholars.h.i.+p.

So, all the while I was learning about John and his temper and his grudge list, he was learning about me.

Drugs, cults. Visionary crows. He was quite frantic; it was very bad for the campaign. He told me I must never say anything about anything to anyone. I was so tired of being told to shut up. But I stayed quiet.

Got pregnant, which John said was a sure vote-getter. Smiled, smiled, smiled, and secretly hoped he'd lose, so I'd be allowed to talk again.

One day he had a debate scheduled, all five candidates meet-ing the press. I fixed his tie. "How do I look?" he asked, and I told him he looked good. He was a handsome man. Turned out there was a pair of my underpants stuck to the back of his jacket. They'd been in the dryer; I suppose there was static electricity. They were huge because I was pregnant, but at least they were clean.

I don't know how they got on his jacket. He said I must have put them there when I hugged him. As if I wanted the voters and the press and everyone to see my underpants! I showed up on his list again; by now no one had more appearances there than I did.Bernadette has destroyed me, is how the item read.

As if he needed me for that. John turned out to have a past, too, a little bywater off the public narrative.

Gambling debts and an arrest record. Aggravated a.s.sault.

He ran off with my little sister without even divorcing me. Dad had to go looking all over the state for them to bring my sis-ter home. Because of who John was, it made the papers. Our family didn't look so good, either. The drugs came out then. The cult. One of the Peppers told me they had an opening, but when I went to talk with Madame Dubois she wouldn't take me back now that I was a mother, and notorious to boot. Madame Dubois said thatsome standards had to be maintained. She said that I'd pollute the Peppers.

She told me no one would ever marry me again, or my sister either, but that turned out not to be a problem.

If a fine Picture, beautiful Fields, crystal Streams, green Trees and imbroider'd Meadows in Landscape or Nature itself will afford such delightful Prospects, how much more must so many well-shap'd Gentlemen and Ladies, richly dress'd, in the exact Performance of this Exercise, please the Beholders.

-KELLOM TOMLINSON, Dancing Master

Sylvia decided to speak frankly with Allegra. I really need you tonight, she was going to say. I don't think it's all that much to ask. For one evening, try to think about me. She met Allegra in the hallway, wearing Sylvia's knit dress. "Okay?" Allegra asked.

Sylvia felt a wash of relief, partly that Allegra was coming, partly that Sylvia hadn't told her she had to.

Confrontation with Allegra rarely turned out the way you planned. "s.e.xy," Sylvia said.

Allegra's mood had improved. She had a lighter step, a straighter back. She was carrying Sylvia's midnight-blue dress with the sunburst st.i.tching at the shoulder. "Wear this." Sylvia put it on. Allegra picked out earrings and a necklace for her. Brushed Sylvia's hair to one side and pinned it. Applied eye shadow and lipstick, gave her a tissue to blot with."Pues. Vamonos, vamonos, mama," she said.

"How did we get so late?"

Sylvia took Allegra's hand as they went outside, squeezed it once, let it go. Beeped open the car and slid into a long, hot night.