My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park

Before you really are.

The audience finally cleared out so the volunteers could pack up the china. As Stephen carried Mrs. Russell's boxes to her car parked behind the Carriage House, I ran to the attic.

'A smashing success!' Willis said. 'You must be very happy.'

'I can't believe it.'

'It was every bit as professional as anything Magda's ever put on a stage.'

'Vera and Nigel loved it. Vera said Lady Weston would have enjoyed it immensely. Perhaps a less formal approach was what Lady Weston envisioned in the first place.'

'I had no idea you were such a good actress.'

'Neither did I!' I laughed.

'So, you'll do it again?'

'Every Wednesday at four. We've already got a waiting list for next week. Vera says we need to add more tables or do a second seating.' Willis joined me on the window seat. 'I'm so glad you were there,' I said. 'I wanted you to see it.'

'I enjoyed it very much,' Willis said. I watched as his face assumed a more sober expression, evolving into a question. 'I thought you said Omar was playing opposite you as Anhalt.'

'That was the plan.' I smiled. 'But we had to let him go before he fainted on stage.'

Willis straightened. 'I was surprised to see Sixby.'

*   *   *

The next time I went to the attic, ratty green cushions had been stuffed into the window seat for my comfort. We met almost every day except Wednesday afternoons. Attic time operated on a different basis than the lower floors of the manor house, a phenomenon I assumed would transfer to any venue where I experienced intense pleasure. Whoever controlled time had decreed that if I were allowed to be happy, I would be allotted half the normal time in which to be so. Each day I anticipated Willis's casual greeting, hunched over his keyboard in the afternoon light when I arrived—the comfort of being expected, as if we were a married couple living in an attic. When he got to a stopping point, he would hand me the laptop and sit back to listen while I read what he'd written. My Jane Austen seemed equally content, sitting beneath some cobwebs in a shadowy corner compiling an alphabetical list of all the male heroes of her books—she'd gotten as far as Edmund Bertram.

'You'll have to dedicate your book to Lady Weston,' I said, 'in gratitude for her attic.'

*   *   *

I wrote to Karen, telling her of the tea-theatre's success. After selling out the first event, we added more tables at the second tea, and cut the scones smaller to feed more people, easily seating sixty. Magda threw a fit when tea patrons lined up in the hall and made noise before her scene was over. In fact, the tea-theatre attracted more people than her professionals-only scene. I told Karen about Willis, leaving out the parts about meeting in the attic and the vampire novel. The only thing bugging me was that I really didn't know what Willis was deciding about. I assumed it had to do with his ordination, but he'd never come right out and said so. I'd replayed the conversation many times in my head, unsure what he meant, afraid to bring it up again for fear of provoking a decision that might go against me. I told Karen I was in love. She replied in bold letters: BE CAREFUL.

*   *   *

'What exactly is the decision you have to make?' I asked him one afternoon.

My Jane Austen fell violently off the stack of boxes she occupied nearby, sending a cloud of attic dust into our midst. His face fell as if I'd broken his laptop and I instantly regretted my impulsive question. If only I could rewind the conversation back to a comfortable subject, like my childhood in Texas and his at boarding school, me being chosen last for the softball team and Willis claiming speed reading as a sport. His gaze left me as he focused inward to form a response. Willis rose from his desk and joined me on the window seat, another sign that something bad was coming. Why hadn't I left things alone, happily learning of his master's in theology at St. Stephen's House, Oxford, and how he'd written only two pages of his thesis, now displaced by the vampire novel? This was starting to feel like the time my dad apologized for missing my high school graduation. I didn't want pity. 'I'm afraid I haven't been fair to you,' he said.

My blood froze. Dust particles paused on their inbound sunbeam. This was about me.

'I haven't been thinking clearly,' he said.

I shivered. My future as Elizabeth Bennet, assured twenty seconds ago, vanished. 'What is going on?' I whispered, searching his face.

'There is someone else,' he said.

Someone Else. The room spun as his words reverberated and pain spiraled downward in awful glory. I stared at the cushion; its particular shade of lime green seemed so unfair, then folded my arms and held myself. 'I can't believe it,' I said.

'You must understand, my situation is complicated.' He gestured. 'I've known her for years; I've known you for weeks.'

I didn't know what to say. At first he looked past me, out the window. When I didn't speak, he stood as if he might leave. 'I don't want you to go,' I said. The news was too difficult to accept, it circled around me, retreating as denial prevailed and then reappearing for another punch in my gut. 'I'm so confused,' I said, shaking my head as he stood at his desk, packing his things. 'Why didn't you tell me?'

He faced me, his hands in his pockets. 'I think that's obvious.'

'Does she know about me?'

'No.' He shook his head. I imagined her asking why he seemed so distant and Willis reassuring her everything was fine as he silently resolved to stop the attic meetings before things got even more difficult. Only he didn't stop the attic meetings.

*   *   *

He was gone for two agonizing days. On the third day, I ran into him, as if by accident, as I entered Newton Priors. 'Will you be up later?' he asked. I went as soon as I could and every day after that, holding my questions and staying on safe topics in his company. We never spoke of the Someone Else but she was present, looming in the background, raising the stakes. My Jane Austen sat frozen in her corner, observing my cautious behavior, flinching when she thought I might fall off my wagon. He behaved like a monk; his reserve over the past weeks made sense now. We talked about his vampire novel and my tea-theatre, and we never touched. But the longer we carried on in this 'trial basis' manner, the closer I felt to him emotionally, the more I began to think he might ditch the Someone Else. If Willis wanted to be with her, why was he with me? I spent every minute of my workdays calculating when I could go to him. Precarious life flourished in the attic. Fed a diet of forbidden fruit, everything around Willis grew, from the story under his fingertips to the organic matter thriving beneath the damp boxes and rotting wood, to me.

'Doesn't this place remind you of Anne Frank's attic?' I asked. 'Nobody knows we're up here.' When we got hungry I snuck into the music room where the volunteers kept leftover tea refreshments, filling napkins with scones and cookies to eat in the attic. I helped myself to bottled water kept in reserve for festival speakers. I borrowed a lamp from one of the parlors and set it on an upturned box we used as a table. Willis brought a green plastic chair for me so that we could both sit with our feet on the bench and look out the window. 'Why is there a window seat in this attic?' I asked.

'So the imprisoned heroine can look out the window and see her lover approaching.' A smile played around Willis's mouth and we shared The Look. But I was thinking: My prince is always in the attic. Had I imagined that kiss so long ago? Our interaction was so restrained that any light touch of his hand, the contact of our fingers when we passed the laptop, or lingering glance when I looked up to find him watching me at the end of a chapter, carried a force far greater than its own weight. I cherished each subtle gesture, hoping they would eventually accumulate into something tangible again. I didn't push. I proceeded with cautious optimism based on the fact that Willis felt like my best friend and he no longer left town. The regular absences to London stopped occurring. I didn't ask why, just allowed myself to hope.

*   *   *