Cindy Jones - My Jane Austen Summer - A Season in Mansfield Park

I survived by eating Bets's leftover cheese crackers and drinking water from the sink in my room. By Tuesday evening, when I began reading the slavery essays in the book Magda had left me, a week had passed since Randolph said he'd call. So tired, yet unable to sleep, I struggled to understand how anyone could believe that Jane Austen was complicit with slave-owning society. No way.

But then I read, and reread, that Jane Austen's father was trustee of a plantation in Antigua. The godfather of Jane's oldest brother owned the plantation, and details of his life bear striking similarity to those of the Bertram family. Jane Austen drew on details from her family to create Mansfield Park. This information wasn't in anything else I'd read about her life. Jane Austen had secrets. Or maybe her father had secrets. But she discovered them. And she never told me. I would have told her something that important. I told her everything. Perhaps we weren't as close as I thought. Perhaps the person in my peripheral vision wasn't Jane Austen at all.

I answered my phone that evening, the last Tuesday of the season. "Hello?" I said, groggy, hung over from the reading binge.

"Hullo?" A male voice. Not Willis.

"Randolph?" The depth of his voice stirred me. Vera would be relieved at the news of his call.

"I've been meaning to call you," he said.

I should be careful. Hold back.

"Can you have dinner tonight?"

Don't do it , I told myself. "Um, yes," I answered.

"There's a small problem," he said. "I'm afraid I'm engaged, but should be free by seven. Any chance you can meet me at my hotel?"

I responded without thinking. "Yes, of course."

"Seven then?"

"Yes."

"Excellent. See you then."

My Jane Austen dimmed in the corner.

By the time Vera drove into Knightsbridge and stopped at the richly beveled glass door of Randolph's hotel, I was unfashionably late; Vera had been too involved coaching me to concentrate on making the lights. "And the most important thing," she said, wagging her finger like a gothic villain, "leave him wanting more." Thanks to Vera's talking and driving I was also unfashionably nervous.

"Where's the business plan?" I asked.

"Here it is." Vera pulled the envelope from the gap between the seats. "Good luck, dear," she said, as if I were a finalist in the Lady Weston Pageant, stepping onto the stage rather than the curb. "Of all the women in this city, Randolph chose to have dinner with you," she said.

The doorman in long coat and derby hat held the door as I entered, my head high, prepared to meet the Eleventh Baron of Weston. Glamorous Actress Enters . Chandeliers glittered overhead and a grand bouquet of white flowers, roses and hydrangeas, graced the entry. Crisp black and white marble tiled the floor and a lamp trimmed in ebony and gold suggested Napoleon slept here. Perhaps Randolph was watching my entrance from just beyond the double doors to the salon. Although he mentioned a previous engagement, I nursed a romantic vision of a handsome nobleman stepping forth to claim me, anticipating the feel of his hand on my back. I stalled, pretending to consult my envelope, allowing Randolph every chance to emerge from the cigar brown lair of tufted club chairs. Finally, it became necessary to concede his absence, but without Vera's enthusiasm, I began nursing a less romantic vision of Randolph held up by a press photographer: Sara Stormont, the real candidate in the Lady Weston contest, posing possessively at his side.

At the high mahogany desk, the young attendant smiled and slipped an envelope across the cold marble countertop before I'd said a word. Apparently he'd been expecting me. Another young male, perhaps the concierge, watched from the nearby desk as I pulled a plastic access key and a thick square of the hotel's cardstock from the envelope. A note in Randolph's handwriting said, Please wait in my room. So sorry to be late. I touched the embossed hotel name and studied Randolph's one-word signature at the bottom: Weston.

In the elevator, my reflection revealed every angle of the diaphanous ankle-length empire gown, borrowed from costumes and accessorized with Bets's goth jewelry. It looked like something an actress would wear. Vera had thought to send a shawl, beneath which I shivered, cold and nervous. My Jane Austen slipped into the elevator behind me. Inserting the access card into the slot on the door handle, a frightening vision flashed before me: my new friend Weston waiting inside, naked in the bed. But the door opened to reveal a large silent room where an unoccupied bed waited in the soft yellow light of a table lamp. I closed the door and entered carefully. What if Randolph was one of those people who jump out and scare you, then think it's funny. Although the hotel was quite old, the room's furniture was contemporary and masculine. A framed photograph of a man laboring at a desk, perhaps the hotel's founder, hung on the wall. A bottle of mineral water from Blenheim Palace (home of Churchill) and a bowl of cherries (me) posed together on the bedside table. The digital clock said 7:38.

Unsure where to wait, the bed and a single chair provided limited seating options. When Randolph arrived, one of us would have to sit on the bed. I chose the chair. My Jane Austen hovered in the background with the drapes. I laid the business plan on the table next to a phone, a laptop, and personal papers. Seated, I smoothed my gown over my knees and began waiting. The clock read 7:41. What should I be doing when he arrived? What tableau should I create for his pleasure? Woman Reading Scary Essay on Fanny Price offered itself as a possibility, except I'd left my book at home. Woman Reclining seemed like a bad idea. Leave him wanting more. I glanced at the debris littering the table. Would I hear him before he opened the door? If I jumped he would think I had been snooping through his papers. How unromantic. But his personal things lay on the table for anyone to see: papers, envelopes, a portfolio. Don't look . I listened carefully for footsteps in the hall. Nothing.

The clock said 7:44. I wondered what he was doing, and with whom. Were there others besides Sara Stormont? Lots of others? It didn't seem so when we were together. Perhaps I would gain insight into this man's life if I looked at the papers on the table. Under those terms, it wouldn't be snooping. Of course it would. Don't look . 7:47 P.M. The room was so very quiet except for my beating heart.

My Jane Austen was creating another list. I was getting a little tired of her lists. Who was she to divide the world into good and bad? Where would her own name fall on one of her lists? "I don't even know you," I said to her. "You're not Jane Austen. Who are you and what are you doing in my head?"

I stood and walked to the bathroom. Oddly, this bathroom had no shower stall. The whole bathroom was the shower. A narrow slice of glass acted as barrier between sink and shower head but water would flow directly into the room. Unless the drain could work really fast, it appeared the room would flood with every shower. The sink offered no counters. No place for a woman's things. And the only electrical outlet was an oddly configured plug for "shavers only." Must be the Caveman Suite. I opened my tiny bag and pulled out my lipstick. Well—Bets's lipstick, I liked the color and Bets had abandoned it. Would he open the door and find me applying lipstick? I leaned in to examine myself in the mirror. Was that me? The real me or the fictional me? Willis would know. Some people understand you so clearly, and others just don't. Most don't. Why is that? I dropped the lipstick into my bag and drew it shut, then checked my breath and decided I could stand a mint, which I didn't have. Toothpaste. Surely he had toothpaste in here, but where? I looked for a Dopp kit but the maid had obviously cleaned; nothing lay about, no razor, toothbrush, or comb. Towels hung neatly folded. I imagined him opening the door just now and finding me embracing the chrome towel warmer for heat.