My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park

bottles either napped or had died. His brow furrowed, Archie gestured and I followed him to the Freezer, where he would feed me to Magda. The portraits scowled, Lady Weston could have me deported, and I took no comfort from the breeze wafting in the open windows. Outside, patrons trained their cameras and video recorders on smiling families, catching other photographers in their pictures, along with the house and grounds. I wanted to run away from him, find a phone and call my sister, anything to stop the squall in my soul.

Claire snagged Archie at the Freezer door so I entered alone to await my doom. Magda was not present. But Bets was. Dressed in costume and ready to perform.

'Hi, Cellmate,' she said, returning my JASNA bag. 'How'd it go?' as if the horror had been according to plan.

Speechless, I took the bag and stared at her. Bets looked different, perhaps her hair caught up in the cap, maybe she'd been crying.

'You got what you wanted,' she said. 'And take this,' she said, handing me her cell phone. 'Lock it up where I can't find it.'

At first I thought she meant giving me the phone was what I wanted—because at the moment, I needed a phone to call Karen. 'Where have you been?' I asked, sounding like her mother again.

'Tommy's,' she said.

'Did you bring my necklace?'

She shrugged. 'I forgot.'

'Oh, Bets. It's not just a necklace.' I imagined my necklace hanging on a bedpost or dropped behind a dresser in some slovenly bed-sit. My mother, left in a tangle near a grimy sink, splattered with water and toothpaste. What nasty rocker was wearing it now? 'You've got to get it back.'

'It wasn't my first priority,' Bets said.

'Next time it needs to be first,' I said.

'There is no next time.' Bets hesitated. 'Tommy needs space.' Her voice turned to a whisper; her tough bravado and tattoos weren't much help to her now. 'He wants us to take a month off from each other.'

'Is he seeing someone else?' I asked.

She shook her head. 'He's working on a new song.' Bets sniffed. 'He got the idea from my script.'

'A song about Mansfield Park?'

'About Fanny Price,' she said.

Her phone rang and I looked at the caller ID. 'Bella,' I said.

Bets grabbed the phone out of my hand, 'Stop calling,' she said. 'I can't talk for a month.' Snapping the phone shut, she handed it back to me and wiped her nose on her white gloves. I might never see my necklace again.

'Bets!' We both turned to see Magda, hissing from the doorway, gesturing for Bets to join the cast.

'Do you know your lines?' I whispered, slipping Bets's phone into my JASNA bag.

'Some of them.' She shrugged, walking into Magda's outstretched claw.

'You,' Magda said, pointing her bangled arm at me, 'wait.'

*   *   *

When Magda returned, Archie and Claire came with her, Archie talking seriously into his cell phone. All three looked very concerned, as if they had not discovered a punishment severe enough to fit my crime.

'That's serious at her age,' Archie said into his phone. 'She may go downhill really fast.' Rilly fahst.

Archie sat on the arm of a sofa; Magda stood staring at him. She began to speak but Archie raised his hand; his irritation flashed at interruptions, even from Magda. 'Are you going to try to see her? Get something signed?' The phone conversation wasn't about me after all. Archie was talking to Nigel and something had happened to Lady Weston.

'Keep us updated.' And then he said, 'Here's Magda, she wants a word with Vera.' Archie handed the phone to Magda as my stomach swooped; he and Claire left the room without looking at me.

'Vera,' Magda said. 'I know you've got a lot on your plate at the moment but I need to tell you we're having our own disasters over here with the corps of amateurs. Thank you for trying to help, I know she's a personal friend of yours, but I need to be consulted before decisions are made that affect the production.'

I slumped onto the sofa, pulling out the crossword puzzle magazine I'd sat on. My Jane Austen drummed her fingers on a bookshelf.

'But Vera, with all due respect, I don't understand why you're taking this stand. It would appear you're allowing sentiment to override artistic and professional considerations at a very critical time.'

I found a pencil. One across: animal smaller than horse. Three letters.

'What you are asking the organization to accommodate at this moment is not reasonable. Bets simply cannot handle the demands. I'm shifting the cast around and giving her a smaller part. And I'm sending Lily back to you. You can keep her or send her home, I don't care.'

My heart dropped. Home. The wedding. There was a punishment cruel enough to fit my crime.

Magda gestured, her bangles clanking. 'I appreciate your spirit and I hope you are able to introduce Jane Austen to more and more ordinary citizens, but right now we're trying to produce Mansfield Park, and if Jane Austen were present this morning, she'd eat your Lily for lunch. And shut us down.'

My Jane Austen was present and she was writing her next book based on the persecution of Lily Berry by the tyrannical literary person wearing a head scarf. After Magda clicked off the phone with her long thumb, she smiled at me, and I recognized the expression my boss used when he fired me, the same delicious regret Sue expressed whenever she had the pleasure of saying no to me. Magda folded her arms, silencing the bangles, and I felt my insides crushed to pulp, the end of the line for me.

'Surely you are aware that you are in over your head,' she said without expression.

I sat there, absorbing the hit, a misfit at this festival; too bookish for home, not bookish enough for here.

'And I can't imagine you're enjoying this.' She rolled her eyes and raised her hands in supplication, waiting for me to speak, but I was so close to tears that one false move would put me over the edge. I determined not to cry in front of her.

'I performed with almost no preparation,' I said.

'True.' Someone opened a door on the noisy hall and Magda waved them out without looking to see who wanted in.

'I know my lines. I can learn the blocking.'

'Listen to me,' she said. Lee sen to mee. 'Don't expect Vera to wave her wand and fix your life by bringing you here.' Magda looked directly into my eyes, stabbing her finger into her palm. 'Even if she could, she has her own problems right now. She's not thinking clearly.' Magda sighed and spoke more softly, almost pleading. 'Why don't you get a Eurail pass and travel? Do something good for yourself.'

'But I want to do this,' I said, knowing My Jane Austen far preferred the literary festival to any train trip.

She shot back at me, 'Teaching you to act so you can participate here is completely outside the scope of this organization's mission. I'm not paid enough to train you; we have no money for theatre directors. I'm an English teacher who does this for the privilege of spending the summer with other English teachers.'

I considered her privilege, one of spending time with a married man in a manor house.

'Archie and I are not theatre directors but we have done enough theatre to pull off what we do here. But we must have professional actors who know what they're doing. Am I clear?'

'What about Bets?'

Magda narrowed her eyes at me and held up two fingers. 'Two important qualifications Bets has that you don't: She's related to the Weston family, and her parents are donating funds to cover this year's operating deficit. Any more questions?' She raised her eyebrows and glared at me, waiting.

Could the Wallet cover our scones?

When I said nothing, she continued. 'If you insist on remaining at this festival, you must stay in Vera's office. There is nothing for you on my stage.'