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

Randolph worked around my shawl, "What do you look like under all this?" he whispered, searching for the zipper of my gown. He found the secret seam under my armpit. He held at the top and tugged with his other hand. "Any calls while I was out?" He smiled, removing my sleeves from my shoulders, but had to stop there since I crossed my arms in front of me. "Lovely." He bent to kiss the breasts bulging over my folded arms. I held my clothes on, resisting the urge to fall into this familiar place, to please a virtual stranger. And things around me weren't transforming. My shoes wouldn't stop being real. The chair and desk remained firmly real and the bowl of cherries sat there slowly rotting. I felt a little pressure behind my eyes, a touch of nausea, and I began to understand how I would feel when this ended.

"Just one call," I answered automatically, before registering his smile and the joke that he was undressing his secretary. "But it was a fax."

He grew sober and left me to fetch his fax. I pulled the gown back over my shoulders as Randolph lifted the paper from the fax trough. The soft light shone on the floral bedspread, recalling the chintz sofa where my mother read to me. Here I was at last, the roses, the soft light, and the prince, all for me. Randolph pursed his lips the way Omar did when he read books on Shaw, the way Willis did when he typed. Randolph signed the paper and loaded it back into the fax machine. He looked up the number and pressed the buttons. The signed document went flying back to Tony Palmer. Then he stood and removed his trousers, throwing them on the chair. "Come now, forget about all that." He reached for me, "Let me help you out of that tangle of clothes."

He would sell Newton Priors. Without even telling me. He pulled the floral bedspread down, the prince bedding Rapunzel. My mother knew. Of course she knew.

"Come now, forget about all that," Randolph repeated, reaching for my hand, no longer smiling. But without "all that" I was just a face, just a body—how little he understood me; my total lack of artifice. I wasn't Rapunzel and he wasn't the prince. Everything about me was the same as always and I could see that after this ended, I would feel bad. Randolph took the shawl from my arms and tossed it at the foot of the bed. Tears pooled in my eyes as I stood, confused. He sat on the bed and searched my face, clearly at a loss with my behavior. But I was better than Maria Bertram, who fell for Henry Crawford every time we played the scene. We play it over and over, five times a week, and she never evaluates her situation; she never thinks about approaching her life with a different end in mind. She can't learn from her mistakes because she is nothing but ink on a page. Fanny Price got in my head. A sensible girl would flee. Sounded so familiar, my own words, unheeded again and again. Fear like yours is not normal .

"Is something wrong?" Randolph asked.

"Yes," I said. "I'm not a professional actress."

"I know. I Googled you; you're an address in Texas," he said. "Vera's little friend." I remembered now: The Look Randolph and Philippa had shared across the hospital bed when Vera announced I was an actress. The information held particular significance for the three of them. He reached to pull down my sleeves, but I grabbed his hands and pushed them to his lap, holding them there. "We don't know each other," I said. Reaching for the zipper of my gown, I pulled up, catching tender flesh. I saw myself returning my Regency gowns to the costume wardrobe, folding the undergarments and tucking them into their drawer before Suzanne arrived. "You're going to sell Newton Priors, aren't you?" I said.

He smiled, falling back on a pillow, his palm on his forehead. "Do you really care?"

"I care very much. So do Nigel and Vera and a lot of others."

He sighed, staring at the ceiling, and I recognized the look of someone planning the best way to deliver bad news to me. "The truth is I can't afford Literature Live," he said, sober. "My accountant has reviewed everything, including your ideas, and advised me to sell the estate if I want to avoid ruin."

"When were you planning to tell us?" I asked.

He paused, rubbing his temples. "Perhaps this is a disappointment to you. But, believe me, Nigel has known for some time." He turned on his side, propping his head on his elbow, patting the bed next to him. "I want you," he said.

I threw the shawl around my shoulders and gathered my business plan. "No," I said.

"That's it? The house is out—so now you're going?"

"Of course not." I could see myself leaving this hotel and leaving Newton Priors, as if I stood on the roof watching myself go, a normal girl. "I've realized something that actually has nothing to do with you."

"So we can still have fun together."

"I'm afraid not." I lifted Vera's fringed bag from the chair, willing to concede a civil good-bye, sparing bridges for the good of the organization. But then he wrapped his arms around a pillow and lowered his voice to a whisper.

"Just think what you can tell your friends when you get home."

I walked to the door and paused; turning to face him, I saw his cell phone in his hand. He slipped it behind his thigh and out of my view, assuming an innocent expression when our eyes met for the last time. "Call me when you grow up," I said. I walked out before he could punch the next girl's number in my presence. 9:06 P.M. Texas Girl Escapes London Hotel.

Vera answered her door. "Lily, you're back," she said; a bright smile lit her face, the room behind her somber, perhaps kept dark for Nigel's benefit.

"Can I come in?" I asked. I'd had enough time alone in the station and on the train to be conflicted over everything that had seemed so neatly resolved when it happened. Now that I had to deliver the bad news to Vera, I considered returning to the scene of the crime and retrading the deal for her sake, offering my body for a lease agreement. Anything but inform her that Newton Priors—Literature Live for the past thirty years—was gone.

"You can't imagine how distracted I've been, thinking of you, wondering how it went with Randolph," she said, searching my face for a sign.

"Not well, I'm afraid." The dream had ended not only for Nigel, but for me. The train ride to Hedingham was my last trip "home" to the festival. Next time, home would be Texas. My new self would return to my old self, even though my old environment no longer fit. Back to a job in a gray cubicle where people don't care what Jane Austen thinks. No lectures, no scenes, no endless stacks of books. My Jane Austen would melt in Texas.

Vera dimmed her tone. "Is there a problem? Come in," she said, arching her eyebrows as she opened the door enough for me to enter. Clearly, I had never been invited into Vera's rooms because a visitor had no place to go. Things cluttered all horizontal surfaces of the tiny apartment used by a dorm mother during the school year. Boxes of Nigel's worldly goods filled the room awaiting further instructions. Perhaps without Literature Live, Nigel would be homeless, like me. The bedroom door remained shut but pillows and blankets lay on the sofa, a good indication of where Vera had slept all summer. I moved a box to the floor, making room for myself on a chair.

Vera sat among blankets on the sofa, her lips pursed. "So, we're all going home, are we?" she asked, not meeting my eyes, fidgeting with the hem of her blanket. Blinds closed, a cock-eyed lampshade directed light onto Vera's lap where a book would usually sit. A tablet of paper—Vera had been composing a list with Claire's name at the top—sat on the lamp table. Crumpled paper, distractingly similar to the trash I'd recently searched, littered the table. The suitcase she dragged through Heathrow waited near the wall.