My Jane Austen Summer (28 page)

I imagined Chutney sneaking out to the Dumpster after hours, tossing entire boxes of musty books into its pit. "I would love to," I said. "What a privilege."

"You know," Vera said, "when the books started coming in, he gave them all to me. He never said so, but I think the books are my compensation."

I would have to think about that.

"And Lily," she said, fixing my attention. "I'm sorry for the way things went with Randolph."

"Oh, Vera."

"It was a farfetched idea." She stood and reached for my hand. "And I was being very selfish."

Without considering, I used my best British accent and channeled Mary Crawford, "Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure."

"Touche," Vera said.

B
ack in Texas, I drove through my former neighborhood, air-conditioning turned full blast. The changes in the season of my absence shocked me. The med student's little duplex on the left now sat vacant awaiting the bulldozer. A developer's sign in the next yard indicated imminent demolition, and a McMansion was going up where my duplex had existed, its construction begun during the summer. Gone were the casual days of twin porches offering two doors, two mailboxes, and two free neighborhood newspapers. The new regime dressed up; urgent flaming carriage lanterns and buxom petunia beds flanked solo porches whose portals could grace a temple. Titanic SUVs posed in driveways begged me to ask,
What master of the universe dwelt therein?
A Hispanic nanny pushed a double stroller out a front door.

I drove slowly past my dad's house, taking note of the "For Sale by Owner" sign in his yard. Dad always said doing it
yourself was the way
not
to sell your house. Maybe he wasn't so keen to move.

I lived in Vera's apartment over the bookstore, managing the store by day, and reading from the unlimited supply of books in the evenings. Having sold my possessions before leaving for England, except for the box of keepsakes still locked in the trunk of my car, I kept remembering my things the way an amputee would remember a lost limb.
It's in my closet
, and then I would remember I gutted that closet and I didn't live there anymore. I had no clothes and no costume department to raid for just the right outfit.

I visited Karen and her family and we worked through our grief together, sorting through what china and photos she was able to save from the wreckage. Karen helped me with my project to donate copies of all my lost books to the Pediatric Oncology Ward of the Children's Hospital. We inscribed them in honor of our mother and whenever I had a new set to deliver, I arrived with enough time to read to whatever seven-year-old child, nauseated from chemo, felt well enough to listen to a story about twelve little girls in two straight lines or a monkey calling the fire department. I would pause briefly to compose myself each time I recognized my mother's voice.

∗ ∗ ∗

Vera and I e-mailed regularly but the flood of new inventory required overseas phone calls for guidance. Several estates had donated books over the summer, and Chutney had parked boxes wherever she could find space, stacking books in the upstairs apartment when she ran out of room in the store. And now that Vera was shipping from Literature Live, we were drowning in books. Boxes piled in the aisles required narrow canals to travel to the cash register or my office.

"How are you, Lily?" she asked.

I immediately choked up. I'd declined my friend Lisa's happy hour invitation in order to be alone with a stack of musty books culled from the boxes of new arrivals--the smell of Newton Priors in their pages. Lisa would never understand falling in love with a clergyman I met in a deserted attic where we discussed his vampire novel-in-progress while My Jane Austen took notes.

"Lily? Are you there?"

"Yes. I'm here."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I said, knowing she could hear the sharp intake of breath, even if she couldn't see the tears, "just lonely."

Vera sighed. "Did you call any of your old friends?"

"Yes," I lied, twisting the phone cord around my finger.

"Well, I suppose it will take some time to find your way," Vera said.

∗ ∗ ∗

Omar e-mailed as promised, attaching an application to a dual MFA/MBA degree offered by the University of Michigan. So glad to hear from him, I responded immediately, asking how Magda's seminar was going, but he must have been busy because he didn't write back. Hearing from Omar brought a rush of memories from the summer. I felt homesick for Newton Priors and My Jane Austen summer. But she'd surely gone to someone who needed her presence--the reader experiencing the shock of separation after finishing Number Six for the first time, an agony I understand clearly. And regardless, her books are with me always--in my office, near my reading lamp in the apartment, and at least one in the car for those moments I need to hear her voice--timeless and sparkling, swirling in my subconscious, folded into my existence.

I was thinking of calling Omar, just to hear his voice, when his e-mail arrived. This time his message brought a far more interesting attachment: a picture from the
London Times
, Court and Society Pages. "Hey, what's up with your old friend?" Omar wrote, and I could almost hear the snark in his voice. I read the caption,
Sheila Bates and Peter Davidson celebrate Ziva's birthday at the Tate Modern
. I'd never heard of these people and puzzled that Omar sent it to me until I recognized a familiar face in the middle ground. There, in strapless splendor, posing next to a giant apple core sculpture, was none other than Philippa Lockwood. My heart raced because the tuxedoed man at her side, his hand possessing her bare arm, his mouth open to speak, was not Willis. If My Jane Austen were here she would be looking over my shoulder, suggesting Pippa might simply be chatting with a mystery man while Willis fetched drinks from the bar.

"Lucky for you, I keep up with the foreign press," Omar wrote.

Foreign gossip, I said to myself.

∗ ∗ ∗

"
Mansfield Park
belongs to so many people and can be read on so many levels," I said to the Bibliophile Book Club regulars seated around the table for our January meeting. Magda loomed heroic now, so safely distant I was willing to entertain the possibility that Jane Austen might have been experimenting in Romanticism when she wrote
Mansfield Park
.

"Slavery, feminism, and incest?" Michael asked, tossing his girlfriend The Look as if I'd exceeded their expectations this time. Michael, formerly a drummer, spent mornings on his laptop writing a book, borrowing from the stacks for his research. He watched all of us, seeking material for his
characters. Occasionally I offered him new words from the summer:
mindful
,
knickers
, and
bad form
.

"Feminism, I love it!" Charlotte, the former actress-turned-single-mother spoke rapidly, as if her babysitter might expire before she articulated her thoughts. "I can live without the incest and slavery, however."

"I always wanted to live in
Mansfield Park
," I said, remembering how Willis said he once wanted to live in a book called
The Pirate's Cove
.

Avery the psychiatrist, who sometimes missed meetings due to emergencies, spoke directly at me, his highlighter paused mid-flip. "What do you mean, Lily?"

"Aren't some characters so real you feel as if you could slip into their lives?" I asked before turning to the group. "Hasn't anyone ever wanted to live in a novel?"

Julia shook her prenuptial curls and adjusted her engagement ring. "I wouldn't want to trade my life."

"You would always know what was going to happen next." Charlotte smiled at me apologetically.

If Omar were present he'd speak up to sharpen the point he'd made giving me the book about English manor houses. I could hear him.
You don't want to
live
in a novel
, he would say.
You want to
hide
in a novel. You say you want to experience the passion of life, but you camouflage yourself in ink and paper. Connect
yourself,
Lily
.

I wanted to warn Avery that his brow, furrowed so deeply, might freeze like that.

Charlotte looked at her watch.

"Actually, I don't think it would be much fun to live in a novel, either," I said. "Inasmuch as I can get into Jane Austen's mind--at least my interpretation of her mind--I can never get anyone else in there with me. And that is the problem. Life in a novel is a lonely proposition."

∗ ∗ ∗

When I finally ran into Willis, it was midnight and I was lying in bed with a publisher's catalogue. Almost a year in Dallas, I'd settled into my job, books no longer filled my apartment or obstructed the paths of the store. But spending so much energy arranging
old
books, we hadn't taken time to order
new
books. Vera, still in England, suggested I investigate the catalogues clogging my in-box and place some orders. But these days, I was more concerned with the Amazon in the living room and how little indies like us might avoid getting swept under the carpet.

As I kicked off my covers, enjoying the open windows, soon to be shut for the summer, my gaze snagged a title at the top of the page.
Vampire Priest
. I sat up to focus the words under my reading lamp.
Debut fiction by Willis Somerford: a vampire priest hides his curse from his beloved and ultimately must sacrifice either his love or her mortality.
I clutched my throat and read it again. Descending to the dark office, I checked online and learned that Willis's book had been published two weeks earlier. Looking the other way, I clicked the one-day delivery option.

∗ ∗ ∗

When the slim brown box arrived, I left Chutney in charge of Vera's empire and locked my apartment door. Once the phones were silenced and Vera's floral quilt dragged to the sofa, I sat shivering beneath the warm glow of the reading lamp, nervous, as if I might meet Willis in the flesh after all this time. I tore open the box and removed the brand-new hardback. The perfectly smooth dust jacket featured two people dressed in black: a man whose head is cropped just above his priest collar and a woman playing a cello.
Vampire Priest
by Willis M. Somerford. The stiff binding and crisp title page offered subtle resistance as I turned to the dedication:

I heard the words in his voice. The essence of Willis emerged from the blurry distance, recalling his powerful attraction, the joy I'd found in my own life through him. Pressure started in my chest and pushed like a hot wave into my head, leaving my eyes wet and my throat aching. As I turned pages, Willis spoke to me through the story of two people who sounded much more like Lily and Willis than they had when I'd read the pages on his screen last summer. Luna plays Bach in F Minor for Father Kitt, the same music I'd played on the old record player for Willis that day in the music room. She seeks Father Kitt after every concert, oblivious to the fact she's fallen for a vampire. On a backstage tour of the dark music hall after closing, she lures him to the undercroft and asks,
"How long must we know each other before our relationship can move forward?"

Father Kitt is dangerously tempted by the hope of sharing his immortal doom...
"She has no idea how I burn to be with her, how close I am to marking her as my own forever."
Tortured by the guilt of his deception, he tells her,
"I'm not strong enough to resist you."
But when she tells him she loves him, he remains silent. In anger, she announces she won't wait for him, but will leave to tour with the orchestra at the end of the symphony season. Desperately torn, he watches from his seat in the audience, seeing her for the last time, knowing he cannot allow Luna to forfeit her soul, to make the irrevocable decision to become something she could not possibly anticipate. Afraid of losing his resolve, he leaves the concert hall before the performance ends and returns to lonely despair.

He never meets her again. But even so, he never stops feeling her presence.

Long after her life reached its mortal end, she still comes to find me at the musicians' entrance. Wisps of brown hair blow across her eyes, her smile beckons me inside--a timeless, sparkling memory, swirling in my subconscious, folded into my existence. And every time I find her at the stage door, I tell her I love her.

After a long while, faint sounds of life rose from the bookstore below.