My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park

ever since. Do you want me to come over?' she asked.

'No,' I said. What good would that do?' Boris had made a break with his past. Good-bye Boris, I thought. I hope you find what you're looking for, too.

'I'm going to put up signs in the morning,' Lisa said. 'I'm so sorry.'

'He's a cat,' I said, rearranging the future without my precious Boris who had lounged on me through endless novels over the past years. If he were here he would be walking across this barren room to sit on my lap. Barren room.

An alarm went off; my room should not be empty.

I dropped the phone on the floor and ran. 'Oh my God. Oh my God.' I could barely catch my breath. I ran through my apartment from back to front, searching in case they had moved it somewhere, knowing in my heart it was gone. Just like Martin. Just like the job and the cat. I opened the screen door and ran into the street where their truck had been parked. 'No,' I cried. 'No, no, no, no.'

I collapsed on the curb, the heel of my hand landing on a shard of glass, a cockroach scurrying for cover. 'Oh my God,' I cried, in bursts of grief, rocking back and forth, my hair tangling in my face. I had no way to track them down. They had paid in cash. The blood from my hand got in my hair and on my clothes and I could feel it mingling with the tears and getting in my eyes.

They had taken the little chest and the books it held. The stories my mother had read to me were lost in some rural resale shop. I had not paid attention and now her voice was gone. I tried to remember the sound of Miss Clavel exclaiming, 'Something is not right,' and the old woman whispering, 'Hush' as I'd snuggled into my mother's side, tracing the roses on the floral chintz love seat, wondering how there could be so much purple and blue in the pink petals. When she read, my mother's voice mixed the lush sofa roses with the soft reading light and the romance of storybook heroines. So when I opened the books she saved for me, I could hear not only her voice but everything she told me, using the words of the stories like a special code between us. All for me. Even though she was dead, I'd cherished this last connection to her. The collection of books offered me comfort and hope. Now the books were gone. How could I have let this happen? I sat folded in the grass by the curb and cried; I couldn't hear her anymore. I stared at the stars and a bug crawled onto my arm. Did I remember the feel of the soft inside of her arm as she turned a page of Goodnight Moon or was I creating memories?

*   *   *

I stood and walked to the front edge of the roof. Lifting my arms to my sides as if preparing to dive, the chilly air blew my skirt, my unquiet spirit gnawing from the inside. What if I just go away? Three stories below lay the great stone steps. Jumping would bring immediate and certain death. No more loneliness; no more pain, no more aching spirit.

Thick dark curtains separated me from the life I had known, curtains to guard the privacy of my self- destruction and reinforce my feeling that nothing waited for my return. Nothing lay behind me but darkness and nothing before me but the void.

Two spooky eyes looked at me as the picture crawled down my screen, the familiar nose and the smile for her father. What started the affair? My father nurturing a vague complaint that something was missing. Sue playing along; willing to be a secret. Karen said Dad cheated because he could get away with it. Did Willis think he could get away with it?

The three of us had made a sharp triangle at the follies; me on the stage, Willis below, and Philippa next to him, as oblivious as my mother. I was the secret of the triangle, willing to take any covert part Willis allowed me to play in his life. Willing to play the part of Sue in the story of my own life.

My toes hung over the edge, a black breeze blew my skirt. Karen says we all have problems. Take it in stride and keep fighting, she says. Not the end of the world. Look at your wonderful life. I looked at myself, perched on the edge of a roof at a failing literary festival, in the middle of the night, in England. Fanny Price beckoned to me from the trap door, no indulgent pity in her voice or manner. 'Come along,' she said. My Jane Austen wasn't there, wouldn't bother, obviously. No patience for nonsense.

Two faint stars struggled in the sky, and something fiercer, a satellite, blinked; perhaps it could see me. I remembered the feeling, lying with Willis, when the cosmos came together and everything belonged to something. Maybe normal people always felt that way. I don't want to be Sue. I don't want to be my mother. My mother no longer makes sense. I bent down to pick up a broken piece of concrete, once part of the balustrade. You should have dropped the code, Mom. You should have talked to me while we sat there all those months reading and dying. Hiding behind books instead of working past your shame to tell me. You should have tried harder. I threw the concrete as hard as I could and watched it smash into bits on the steps three stories below. I don't want to be like you. 'I want to be normal,' I cried from the rooftop. 'I just want to be normal.'

Twenty-One

Two mornings later, I lay in bed while Bets did her five-minute prep for work: the thong, the dress, the kerchief.

'Time to rise and shine, Cellmate,' Bets said.

I'd seen no one for three days. Not Omar, not Sixby. My Jane Austen had been absent since she faded out in Sixby's room. I'd suspected she might be prickly, but never imagined she would ditch me for good. A dead person should take a more godlike approach and cut me some slack. Maybe Magda was right; the real Jane Austen would swallow me whole.

Being Wednesday, Mrs. Russell would come looking for me if I didn't show up. 'I'm sick,' I told Bets, still recovering from the rooftop spectacle. Thank God no one but Fanny Price witnessed my drama. Now Fanny was gone. Perhaps Maria Bertram would haunt me. Maria and I could compare stories about self-destructing over the wrong men scene after scene, but that would cease to amuse her once she claimed the high ground of being ink on a page, lacking in the opportunity so abundant to me, of learning from mistakes.

Gary came to the door with coffee and Bets shushed him. 'She's sick,' she whispered as they closed the door behind them. One thing I was sure of: they were up to something. Last night during a commercial, Bets said, 'Why not now?' She used a few Arabic words I missed, but Gary shook his head, clicked his tongue, and said lah, Arabic for no. I fell asleep breathing fumes from their Indian food.

I opened my eyes and pulled Willis's jacket out from under my pillow. Had he gone to London for good? His abrupt absence felt like death, a giant iron wall preventing further communication. I could never tell him one more thing or ask him one more question. I lay in my bed, staring at the plaster wall, seeking a pattern in the faint swirls.

The messy room had begun to stink; I knew I would find dirty food cartons if I bothered to look. They'd left cellophane wrappers on the floor. Biscuit tins, bottles, cans, newspapers, and bags littered the room. Bets had thrown her clothes on the floor as they left her body. My follies costume lay spread on the table to dry. I got up and opened the window to let air circulate; gray and rainy outside.

Not having bothered with my appearance since the night with Sixby, I looked awful. I sat on my bed in my nightgown, holding my script. With Magda on her way out, I needed to know the lines and I'd been reading the part where Fanny refuses Henry Crawford's proposal of marriage. Even though I'd read it many times, the scene never failed to create anxiety that this time Fanny would cave, fall prey to Henry Crawford's superficial arts, be seduced by the comfortable life he offered. I considered reading Sense and Sensibility instead.

The rain rallied and I had to consider the possibility that Sense and Sensibility might get wet on the windowsill. I rescued the book, using my nightgown to wipe it dry. To my utter surprise, Willis appeared, walking toward my dormitory. I ducked down and watched over the sill like a spy, the rain spattering my face. Willis walked purposefully, eyes downcast, the hood of his jacket protecting him from the rain. He headed for the parking lot but turned as if he were approaching the entrance of my building, a place he'd never been. My room! I quickly bolted the door, turned off the lights, and regretted the unmade beds, clothes covering the floor, dirty dishes in our little sink. Every horizontal surface lay buried under junk, drawers stood open. Impossible to clean the room in the short time he would spend climbing the stairs. And even if I could straighten