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

" I am," I said.

Inhaling deeply, she shaded her eyes, and I noticed a tremor in her little finger. "What went wrong?" she asked.

Her question implied I'd messed up the drills she'd carefully taught me. Anger released a hit of adrenaline. "It's not about anything going wrong," I said, a bit too loud, noting the crux of the problem with Vera—always insisting dissimilar things fit together, her own brand of reckless creativity. "It simply wasn't meant to be," I said. " Ever ." If I was not careful, I would break down. Not about Randolph, but the whole summer, about the lost possibility of connecting with an ideal life. I tried to remember how I had planned to tell her about the house but I lost my way and then the door opened and Nigel walked in.

Vera raised her hand. "Lily's back."

"Hullo, Lily." I was sorry he was here; now I'd have to deliver the bad news to both of them.

"There's a message from John Owen on your bureau," Vera said, sitting up straight, moving her blankets to make room for Nigel on the sofa. "But come and sit now." She patted the cushion next to her. Nigel opened the little refrigerator in the tiny kitchen casting light into the room. All those years of working to build an organization; who was I to tell him it had ended? Surely, someone could find another house.

"What, Lily? Tell us what happened." Vera's arm braced the sofa. Nigel concentrated on the refrigerator's interior as I did whenever the nurse gave me a shot; don't look and it will soon be over.

"Randolph's accountant has advised him to sell Newton Priors; he has hired a broker."

Vera struck herself in the heart. "I can't believe it," she said.

"Yes," Nigel said, his face still turned away.

"We assumed"—Vera clutched her throat—"that Randolph would require changes, perhaps even major changes in funding and direction such as Magda had pushed, but I never really anticipated he'd sell the house from under us."

"I did," Nigel said, retreating to his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Vera leaned forward. "What happened with Randolph?" she asked, her eyes narrowed, seeking a place to lay the blame. "He asked if restoring old houses was the sort of thing you wanted to do, only a few days ago." She frowned. "He seemed so interested."

"Interested yes," I said. "In one thing."

"But he invited you to dinner. What happened to make him change so quickly?"

I stared at her. "He Googled me."

"Really."

"You told him I was an actress, remember? He discovered the truth."

"So much has changed since I was your age," she said, backing off now that her share in the crime lay exposed. "I don't understand romance these days."

"No, Vera," I said. "Things have not changed. They never change. Have you read Jane Austen?" I asked. "Inheritance laws change but human nature never does. Even dead, Jane Austen understands that." My voice grew too loud as desperation crept in. Why was Vera's recklessness only now clear to me? I deserved blame for not reading her more closely. "You knew. But you fed me to him anyway, like a throw-away orphan, hoping he'd let you stay in the house a few more years."

"Lily, what are you talking about?" Vera's face became ugly. "I wanted this for you ." She spoke very slowly. "I desired with all my heart that it would work out for you— somehow —this time."

Tears came and I felt hopelessly tangled in my own losses.

"Lily," Vera said, rising, coming to my side.

I held up my hand. "Don't talk to me," I said. She tried to put her arm around me but I stood.

"We're all upset," Vera said as I walked out.

The next night I had dinner with Omar. Tomorrow, he would be gone, along with Archie, Magda, Bets, and Willis. And My Jane Austen. We met in the pub, Omar looking spiffier than usual in an oxford cloth shirt, his rough hair watered down and combed.

"I brought you something." He handed a book across the table.

"Omar, how sweet," I said, regretting I had not thought of a gift for him. I read the cover. English Manor Houses . "It will remind me of our summer," I said, aware it wasn't a straightforward gift; some irony existed that I was too anxious to grasp.

"Read the inscription." Omar smiled so hard his cheeks pushed his eyes into little slits behind his glasses. He waited for the punch line to occur to me, optimistic that it would.

To Lily, Repeat often:

People live in houses, not novels.

People live in houses, not novels.

Omar

"Very funny," I said, failing to match his mirth, turning the pages. I wouldn't be able to focus on the gift until much later, alone in Texas. We walked to Newton Priors and sat on the steps of the house in the twilight. "I once assumed Jane Austen was mistress of a grand house like this," I said. "One of my early mistaken impressions."

"Now you know," Omar said, smiling.

"Wouldn't you love to see all the letters Cassandra destroyed?" I asked. "Knowing what she really thought might solve your Jane Austen problem."

"Nah, I'd be disappointed, as usual." Omar shrugged.

"Probably," I agreed.

We were watching bats fly overhead, little black specks that surely slept in my attic during the day, when Mrs. Russell appeared. I almost missed her, dressed as she was in twenty-first-century jeans. "We're saying good-bye to the house," I said.

"Oh my dear," she said. "You'll miss the ball."

"The ball?"

"You didn't hear? Nigel called me last night and I rushed right over"—she indicated her attire—"dressed as I was"—she covered her mouth—"with a toothbrush in my purse." She laughed confidentially. "I slept upstairs last night," she said. "I've no time to turn around. The ball's Sunday and we're all pitching in to make it happen."

"I'm so glad," I said. "You've worked for it so long." Nigel's parting gift to the volunteers.

"Now or never." Mrs. Russell shrugged and I realized how alike she and I were, each of us projecting ourselves into dead Jane Austen. Mrs. Russell's need illuminated my own need to create my personal heroine. The real Jane Austen was unknowable. She was not the creature of perfection the family memoirs put forth, their lack of particulars allowing us to imagine her in our own image. I considered giving Mrs. Russell a copy of Magda's textbook.

"You know what I think I learned this summer?" I said, after Mrs. Russell left us.

"You can act," Omar said.

"Besides that."

"What?" Omar turned to face me, expecting something really interesting.

"I think I'd never make it in a Jane Austen novel; the experience might be worse than real life."

"Congratulations, Dorothy. You can tap your ruby slippers and go home now," Omar said.

"For example," I said, setting the book on the step in front of me and hugging myself in the evening chill, "Henry Crawford could crook his little finger and I would be a ruined woman before the story had a chance to begin."

"No you wouldn't," Omar said. "Not anymore."

I turned to look at Newton Priors in the waning light. How long would its details remain crisp in my mind? How would it appear from the distance of my humble gray cubicle? "I used to imagine myself as the protagonist in every novel I read," I said.

"Don't we all? Hard work being a protagonist."

"You can say that again."

"Hard work being a protagonist."

I socked him in the arm.

Omar smiled big and patted my knee. "Lily, I'm going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you, too, Omar." My eyes filled with tears.

Omar departed for Michigan; I didn't see him again. I had hoisted my suitcase onto my bed packing everything I would not need before departure, when a knock sounded on my door.