Curtis Sittenfeld - Eligible

A WOMEN’S LEAGUE meeting impelled Mrs. Bennet from her bed after a thirty-six-hour period, and while she was up and about, she grudgingly agreed to see a condominium in a twenty-story building that she began disparaging before climbing from the car. “I’d never live so close to the highway,” she told Mr. Bennet, Liz, and Shane. “I don’t know how anyone sleeps a wink with cars zooming by at all hours.”

“The good news,” Shane said, “is that every place we see, even if you don’t like it, will help us narrow in on what you do want.”

Thus, they still toured the unit, and while standing in the master bathroom with her mother, Liz said, “With the influx of money from selling your house, this seems like the perfect time to draw up a budget. You can decide, ‘Okay, I’m allotting X dollars per month for ordering stuff from catalogs, and if I exceed that amount before the month ends, I won’t buy anything else.’ ”

Mrs. Bennet gave her daughter a withering look. “I know perfectly well what a budget is, Elizabeth.” While gazing at herself in the mirror, Mrs. Bennet added, “I hope Lydia’s not making a mistake moving in with Ham. You know what they say about when men get the milk for free.”

“Except that he’s supporting her. She hasn’t even tried to get a job.”

Liz’s comments seemed to please Mrs. Bennet. “Lydia’s such a pretty girl,” she said approvingly.

FITZWILLIAM DARCY ATHERTON, CA, Liz typed into Google, and after reading through the results, she tried, sequentially, Fitzwilliam Darcy Harvard Medical School, Fitzwilliam Darcy University of Cincinnati Comprehensive Stroke Center, and, just for the hell of it, Fitzwilliam Darcy girlfriend. She determined that he used neither Facebook nor Twitter, and while he wasn’t entirely without an online presence, it was a mostly factual one: His bachelor’s degree from Stanford was in biochemical sciences and, also from Harvard, he held a PhD in neuroscience. (When had he had time to acquire a PhD?) He’d won a number of obscurely named awards (at the American College of Surgeons’ 44th Annual Meeting, the Rothman T. Barnett Resident Prize) and authored or co-authored several even more obscurely titled articles published in medical journals (“Modulation of Brain Stimulation on the Interaction Between Ventral and Dorsal Frontoparietal and Basal Ganglia-Cortical Networks During Expectation and Re-orienting”). In his photo on the stroke center website, he wore both a tie and a white coat.

Rather more titillatingly: His family’s estate in Atherton was called Pemberley — it was located at 1813 Pemberley Lane, though Liz guessed the estate name to predate the street name — and its value was estimated at, variously, $55 million, $65 million, or $70 million.

The search for Fitzwilliam Darcy girlfriend bore no fruit.

ADJUSTING TO LIFE in Rhinebeck, Jane reported to Liz by phone, had been nearly seamless: Lydia’s assertion notwithstanding, Amanda and Prisha were treating her as a friend rather than an employee; their son, Gideon, was charming; and Jane had discovered a delicious vegan bakery, which, unconstrained by worry about weight gain, she walked to each afternoon for muffins and slices of pie. She felt a lingering sadness about Chip, she conceded, but such melancholy would exist wherever she was and had, if anything, been diminished by the change of scenery. “And meanwhile, you’ve managed to sell the house in the blink of an eye,” she said. “You’re amazing.”

“It’s Shane who sold it, and it’s not official until the closing,” Liz said.

“Whatever,” Jane said. “It’s a fantastic house. Have you been in touch with Jasper?”

“He’s texted me a few times, but I haven’t answered.”

“Good for you, Lizzy.”

Though it crossed Liz’s mind to mention cavorting with Darcy, Jane’s mood was too cheerful, and her faith in Liz’s strength of character too recently affirmed, to make the disclosure seem appropriate. Instead, Liz said, “Tell Amanda and Prisha hi from me.”

KITTY WAS DOING push-ups on the floor of her room when Liz paused in the doorway. “You and Mary should start looking for an apartment,” Liz said. “The inspection of this house is tomorrow.”

As Kitty silently continued her push-ups — her form was excellent — a framed photograph set on the mantel of Kitty’s fireplace caught Liz’s eye. Liz crossed the room to examine it and found that the photo, which was about two by three inches, was of Mervetta and Kitty. The older woman, who was seated, wore a yellow skirt suit and matching yellow straw hat, and Kitty was crouched next to her in a sleeveless dress, both of them smiling.

“When was the picture of you and Mervetta taken?” Liz asked.

From the floor, Kitty said, “Her seventieth birthday.”

“Where was it?”

“Her son’s house. Bond Hill.”

“Did anyone else from our family go?”

“Dad.”

How rare it was, Liz thought, to be surprised in a good way by the members of her family.

“Did you and Dad go to Mervetta’s funeral?” Liz asked.

Kitty still hadn’t looked up. “Of course,” she said.

“THE LEAST HELEN Lucas could do,” Mrs. Bennet said as Liz descended the staircase in her running clothes, “is thank me for introducing my nephew to her daughter. I’ll tell you what — finding a man willing to date a young lady that size is no easy feat.”

Was it possible that in Mrs. Bennet’s mind two mutually exclusive narratives coexisted: the belief that Liz had made a dreadful error in spurning Willie and the belief that she, Mrs. Bennet, deserved credit for the match between Willie and Charlotte? It appeared so.

Liz had reached the front door and said, “I’m going for a run.”

“Did you send a message on the computer to Allen Bausch yet? He’d be so pleased to reconnect with Mary.”

“I don’t think Mary wants anything to do with him.”

“It’s worth a try. You just never know.”

“No,” Liz said. “That’s not true. Sometimes you do know.”

“THAT NIGHT WE met,” Darcy said, “at the Lucases’ house, when I told you the chair next to me was taken, Dr. Lucas had asked me to save a seat for him. He never sat in it, but I couldn’t have ignored the request of my host, who also happens to be one of the directors at a hospital where I see patients. I wasn’t being rude to you for the sake of being rude.”

“I hope that’s been weighing on you all summer.” Liz was naked, though only recently so, as was Darcy; he was lying on the bed on his back, his head elevated by two pillows, and she was sitting on him, her legs straddling his waist. Again, they had met by semi-coincidence rather than specific plan; they still hadn’t exchanged cellphone numbers or email addresses. “When I overheard you trashing me, my family, and Cincinnati,” Liz said, “was that also because you didn’t want to offend Dr. Lucas? I’m sure you must have been showing your good breeding somehow, because it couldn’t have been that you were just acting like an asshole.”

“Touché,” Darcy said. Both his hands rested on both her hips, and there was something ludicrous and suspenseful — pleasingly ludicrous and suspenseful — about having this conversation unclothed, prior to the main event.

She said, “Anything else you need to clear the air about?”

She’d been kidding, but his expression became serious. “Do you want children?”

“If you’re trying to convince me that we shouldn’t use a condom, the answer is absolutely not.”