My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park

I'm Amelia. And Omar is Anhalt.' I felt his regard penetrate my face, going in through the eyes, seeking a comfortable place near my heart. 'I think she's up to something with Stephen Jervis. Maybe the tea-theatre was a bad idea; we should have continued pushing for a ball. I don't understand why Nigel is so opposed to a ball,' I said, talking, while I cast about for the optimal moment to activate my plan. I sensed My Jane Austen in a dark corner, working on 'A List of Silly Girls.' She'd gotten as far as Lydia Bennet.

'It's not the ball, really,' Willis said. 'Rather a preference for the way his festival addresses the study of Jane Austen.' He looked into my eyes as I ran my fingers over the hem of Bets's black blouse that buttoned up the front. 'Professional academics have rules for the study of literature which the fans tend to ignore.'

'Such as?' I asked.

'Well.' Willis looked down, and I wondered if he knew where I was going with the blouse. 'The fan club treats characters as if they were real people and speculate on their lives outside the text.'

I sat up straight. 'Go on.'

'Study requires analytical skills and specialized knowledge that professional academics spend their careers acquiring.'

'Well, that automatically excludes a lot of people.' My heart beat faster.

'Lady Weston and Nigel chose to work together to elevate the study of Jane Austen, to provide self-taught readers access to the academic research in a manor house setting.'

'You must know the Lockwood family,' I said, recalling Willis with Randolph at the orientation meeting.

'Yes,' Willis said, clearing his throat.

Inasmuch as he knew what he had just told me, how could he not know the fun facts I'd been sharing at our daily wonder-fests? Maybe he was pretending not to know just so he could listen to me talk. I took a deep breath, gathering courage from the scent of Bets's spicy perfume I'd sprayed on my neck and wrists, and placed my fingers on the top button of my black blouse. The top button slipped out and my fingers traveled down to the next.

'What are they like?' I asked, my voice breaking, the second button freed and my fingers on the third, the top of Bets's black bra visible. Willis exhaled, his eyes on my cleavage as I opened the fourth button and slowly pulled the blouse apart. Moonlight cast a white sheen on my curving flesh as I considered releasing the bra's front clasp. Willis didn't speak but I could hear his breath. He took my hands, pushing them down to my lap, and held them there. Maybe he wanted to look at me in the moonlight. But then he touched the blouse and, starting at the bottom, he buttoned one after the other until all were closed.

Then he held my hands again. 'We don't know each other, Lily,' he whispered in the darkness. I turned away, fearing this was what Martin meant by needy, feeling I'd been censured, feeling embarrassed and confused, too ashamed to look at him. I would have stood but he had my right hand and held it tight. I looked away, all the bad feelings melting the snow inside me to a grimy slush and I wanted to lie down and drown in it.

'Tell me why you're so sad,' he said.

No one had ever asked me that question; I didn't know what to say and if he hadn't been holding me and talking to me the way he was, I would have run away.

'Hmm?' he murmured, his mouth close to my head, his other hand on my chin, lifting my face to look at him.

Even I didn't understand my deep sadness, with me as long as I could remember. My earliest memories were of being sad, different from everybody else; perhaps the reason I never fit in. Grave and serious like Jane Eyre, or Catherine and Heathcliff, or Anna Karenina. I understood exactly how they felt, and nobody in real life shared that kind of pain with me. No one, not even my mother, had ever known about my sadness. I'd been so worried about psychologists, and now writers, penetrating my defenses, when all along deacons had the power. I didn't know where to start—from my deep and powerful identification with The Secret Garden in fourth grade, to the loss of my mother, the books, the necklace, or everything in between. 'My mother died,' I said, tears filling my eyes, 'last September.'

'I'm sorry,' he said.

I felt a rush of gratitude, my face crumpled like a small child while he searched his pockets and handed me a tissue.

'You need help with that grief,' he said.

'I've had some help. I chose the Episcopal church, mostly because of the Book of Common Prayer; you know—the exquisite beauty and power of the words.' Manifold sins and wickedness came to mind. 'But after she died, my father donated her body to science and we had a lunch in our backyard. He wouldn't talk to the priest; he never went to church with us.'

'Why is that?'

'He says God isn't interested in religion.' Telling Willis brought it back to me, that sudden vacuum of emptiness—even with all the usual suspects gathered at our house. I told Willis about 'the bossy aunts breaking into my mother's china cupboard, the black sheep opening the fridge for another beer.'

Willis sat perfectly still.

'Everyone was there except my mother,' I said. 'She would have asked my cousin questions about grad school and whispered for me to get the silver tray out of the bottom shelf for the meat. I kept expecting her to walk into the room. But she wasn't there. Her place was empty.' I stopped to compose myself.

'Yes,' Willis said.

'After she died, I couldn't cry. Not until her best friend, who traveled from Ohio to see me, walked into our kitchen.' I could still recall the sound of her black pumps on the linoleum floor, the jangle of her keys hitting the kitchen counter, and the rustle of her slip against her black skirt as she opened her plump arms to me. 'We've both lost our best friend,' she said, holding me tight while I sobbed into her shoulder.

'That's actually a normal reaction,' Willis said.

'How normal is sneaking into random Episcopal funerals?' I held the tissue to my lips, recalling the words I craved, All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song.

'Less so.' He nodded.

'My father wasn't home much when I was growing up. He traveled a lot for work and I never felt close to him. Still, I was surprised when, about a week after everyone left, he started seeing a woman.'

Willis closed his eyes.

'Even absent as he had been, his behavior didn't correspond to anything I expected from him or understood about my life and I didn't know what to believe. I still don't. My sister thinks the affair started before my mother died.'

'Did you talk to him about it?'

'No. And he told us not to speak of our mother in front of his friend because our grief makes her uncomfortable.'

Willis waited while I dabbed my nose.

'I lost the childhood books she saved for me and now I've lost her last gift to me, a cross necklace she made by melting her wedding ring,' I said, shaking my head. 'I feel like she's slipping away from me.'

We were so quiet I could hear a scratching noise and leaves rustling outside.

'No one knows what it's like after we die.' Willis looked into my face. I wadded the tissue in my hand and wished for another. 'I imagine the soul becomes part of that great eternity beyond our understanding of place and time, with us always, just as God is with us.'

'Oh no.' I thought of my mother following me around like My Jane Austen.

Willis smiled. 'Not in the judgmental human way of seeing you.'

I accepted another tissue. Willis touched my hand and we sat silently for a while, listening to the house creak and things fluttering in the rafters. 'Are you ready to go?' he asked.

'No. I want you to tell me why you're so sad,' I said.

'I'm not sad.' Willis patted my hand.

'Then, what is it?' I asked.

Willis squirmed. 'English reserve.' He smiled. After a silence, he got up and went to his desk to gather his books and I turned to look out the window. I wanted us to leave together and stay together for the walk back to my dorm. He would not get away from me this time. Closing a book on his desk, his movement jarred the table,