Curtis Sittenfeld - Eligible

“Nor is Nancy Bildeier’s house an advertisement for anything,” Mr. Bennet said. “If she owns a piece of furniture not covered by dog hair, I’ve never noticed it.”

Liz hadn’t expected resistance. Uncertainly, she said, “What if I pay for the first visits?” At present, she had $13,000 in her savings account, an amount that reassured her in comparison to the nonexistent nest eggs of her sisters but that also appeared inexplicably low given that her annual income was $105,000, she had no dependents, and, apart from living in New York, she wasn’t profligate.

“That’s not a good use of your money,” Mr. Bennet said. “Nor of mine. The answer is no.”

“But don’t you think the house is kind of a mess? And the yard, too?”

Mr. Bennet sounded untroubled as he said, “Everything tends toward entropy, my dear. It’s the second law of thermodynamics.”

TO LIZ’S SURPRISE, both Lydia and Kitty exclaimed with delight on hearing at dinner of Charlotte’s Charades invitation. “I hope you know I’ll kick your asses,” Lydia said, and Mary said, “By cheating, you mean?”

“What if we’re on the same team?” Liz asked. “Is your ass kicking restricted to your opponents or is it indiscriminate?”

“Do you ever pass up a chance to use a big word?” Lydia replied. “Or do you find that circumlocution always magnifies life’s conviviality?”

“That wasn’t bad,” Liz said. “Especially for someone who scored as low as you did on the verbal part of the SATs.”

“Stop quarreling, girls,” Mrs. Bennet said. “It’s unbecoming.”

“They’d never speak to one another otherwise,” Mr. Bennet said.

“Chip and I are going out Friday,” Jane said. “But if we weren’t, I’d love to come.”

“Charlotte’s inviting him, too,” Liz said, and Mrs. Bennet said, “I’m sure Chip would rather spend time alone with Jane. A new couple needs space.”

Lydia turned to her eldest sister, her voice merry. “Jane, do you think Chip will be the one you lose your virginity to?”

Mr. Bennet stood, dropping his napkin on the table. “As interesting as I find this conversation, an urgent matter has come up. I need a hamburger.”

Simultaneously, Liz said, “Dad, you can’t drive,” and Jane said, “Dad, you can’t eat red meat.”

Mr. Bennet gestured toward his plate, atop which sat moderate portions of lentil stew prepared by Jane and salad prepared by Liz. “This is unacceptable,” he said. “I’m not a small woodland creature. Lizzy, we’re going to Zip’s.”

“Dad, Dr. Morelock is the one who recommended a plant-based diet,” Jane said. “It wasn’t us.”

“The iron in a hamburger will help Dad,” Kitty said. “Just don’t eat the bun.”

“That’d be like watching a burlesque show with one’s eyes closed,” Mr. Bennet said.

“Yuck,” Mary said.

Mr. Bennet pointed toward the back door. “Hop to, Lizzy.”

Liz glanced at Jane, who sighed audibly. This Liz took as tacit permission, and she, too, stood; the truth, unfortunately, was that the lentils were almost flavorless. “Does anyone else want anything?” she asked.

Everyone did except for Jane — they requested hamburgers and cheeseburgers and french fries — though at the last minute, just before Mr. Bennet and Liz walked out the back door, Jane called after them, “Fine. I’ll take an order of onion rings.”

“ARE YOU STILL planning to stay in Cincy until September?” Jasper said to Liz over the phone. “Because I don’t know if I can wait that long for you to get back.”

“I was thinking we should meet somewhere for a weekend in August,” Liz said. “Maybe Cape Cod?”

“Here’s my question,” Jasper said. “I realize your mom’s shindig is the biggest thing ever to happen in her life. But when she claims to be spending her days on nonstop planning, what’s she literally doing? Isn’t the event at a hotel that’s making the food and taking care of the setup?”

While Liz had wondered the same thing, she wasn’t sure Jasper knew Mrs. Bennet well enough — they’d met only once, years before — to have earned the right to ask. “She and the other women are trying to get donations for the silent auction,” Liz said. “And the proceeds from the auction go to a shelter for homeless teenagers. It’s not total society-lady fluffiness.”

“Okay, now you’re making me feel like a bad person. But doesn’t your mother know I need my Nin?”

Liz smiled. “You know I’m here for my dad, not my mom. Besides, you kept me waiting fourteen years. Surely you can wait two more months.”

“What kind of jackass would keep Liz Bennet waiting for fourteen years?” Jasper said. “If I ever met that guy, I’d punch his lights out.”

WHEN CAROLINE BINGLEY and Fitzwilliam Darcy walked through the door of Charlotte’s downtown apartment, the sight of Darcy rattled Liz more than she wished to admit.

“Sorry,” Jane murmured to Liz — Chip and Jane had indeed decided to start their evening at Charlotte’s — as the newest arrivals headed into the kitchen to obtain drinks. “Are you okay?”

Liz squared her shoulders. “Of course.”

But Darcy’s comment at the Lucases’ barbecue about Liz’s ostensibly single status— I suppose it would be unchivalrous to say I’m not surprised— had echoed unpleasantly in Liz’s head during the last week. Could it have been his spontaneous attempt at wit? Or in their brief encounter, had he taken note of some off-putting feature of her presentation — disgustingly bad breath, say — that no one, even Jane, had ever felt comfortable mentioning? In New York, Liz rarely dwelled on the contours of her romantic life, but in Cincinnati, the irregularity of her arrangement with Jasper had come into sharper focus. Depending on how long Susan’s grandmother took to die, it could be several more years before Jasper and Susan officially divorced and, Liz imagined, she and Jasper moved in together. Eventually, in some low-key ceremony, they would marry. It seemed plausible she’d be the last of her sisters to wed, but Liz didn’t share her mother’s view of matrimony as a race. After all, she already had a companion to reliably talk things over with and another body in the bed to reliably curl against, and weren’t those marriage’s truest perquisites?

And yet, with regard to Jasper, Liz wasn’t impervious to self-doubt. At a co-worker’s wedding, when filling out a form that required her to declare her marital status or identify an emergency contact (she always wrote Jane’s name), or if otherwise confronted with evidence of choices she’d made without necessarily having recognized them as such in the moment — these circumstances all gave her pause. In recent weeks, as she’d repeatedly bumped into former classmates or old family friends, the proof was ample that other people’s choices had been different. A few days before, she had met Charlotte for a drink at Don Pablo’s, which had once been their favorite restaurant, and as Liz took a sip of her pomegranate margarita, she realized that at the adjacent table, standing up to leave, was their Seven Hills classmate Vanessa Krager, as well as a bald man who appeared to be Vanessa’s husband and four children between the ages of five and twelve who appeared to be their offspring. How was this mathematically possible? And wasn’t there, in Vanessa’s avid reproduction, something unseemly, some announcement of narcissism or aggression? It was generally less shocking to Liz that twenty years after high school she was still her essential self, the self she’d grown up as, unencumbered by spouse or child, than that nearly everyone else had changed, moved on, and multiplied. After moderately warm greetings, introductions, and updates (Vanessa was working part-time doing billing for a chiropractor, the family was soon due at the ten-year-old’s piano recital), Vanessa said, “Liz, I read your interview with Jillian Northcutt. Do you think Hudson Blaise cheated on her?”