My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park

Vera took a deep breath. 'You'll have to pay for your flight.'

'What's the Randolph Department?' I asked.

'Randolph Lockwood, Eleventh Baron of Weston.' Vera paused, perhaps considering how much to tell me. 'He recently inherited the manor where we stage our productions and he's very interested in bottom lines—if you will.'

'And you need help with him?'

Vera leaned in to confide, 'Yes.'

'What happens if Elizabeth Banks shows up?' I stopped breathing.

Vera smiled and shook her head. 'She won't show up.'

'But what if she does?'

'We'll have a new problem.' Vera straightened and pressed her index finger on the desk, getting down to business. 'You've read Mansfield Park,' she said.

'Of course.'

'And you are familiar with the criticism.' Her eyes narrowed.

'Some,' I said, considering the introduction I'd saved for last, wondering where I could find more criticism to read—quickly.

She pressed her lips together and lifted a book off the floor. 'You'll love this.' She handed me a biography of Jane Austen, her gesture conjuring my mother: a gauzy childhood memory where I'm nestled in my mother's side listening to a story about twelve little girls in two straight lines. My mother saved my childhood books in an antique chest and when I read them I can still hear her voice. 'And read this,' she said, handing me another. 'It includes a few essays on Mansfield Park.'

I took the books. 'Vera,' I said, locking eyes with her. 'Thank you.'

She looked startled. 'You're welcome.' And then she smiled. 'You know, you remind me of myself,' Vera said. 'I don't often come across amateur readers with such a passion for literature. Jane Austen's prose spoke to you, just as it spoke to me.'

I had a feeling that, were Jane Austen present, she would ignore the amateur readers in the room and speak directly with the Randolph Department. Perhaps I should exert more diligence.

'When do I leave?' I asked.

Three

Once my bags were checked and my boarding pass tucked into The Mysteries of Udolpho, nothing but a series of long corridors remained between me and my plane to England. Every step I took in my tailored pantsuit, looking more like a flight attendant than an actress, keeping pace with business travelers power-walking to their flights, took me one step farther from my father's wedding and closer to my rebirth in a Jane Austen novel. I wondered if my father even knew I was leaving the country. 'Teach him,' I muttered silently, hoping my lips hadn't moved. I avoided tripping over rolling carry-ons as I changed lanes, desperately seeking a bathroom to relieve myself of the coffee I'd been drinking all morning. What if we had no bathroom in our Mansfield Park house? I'd better go while I still could.

Ducking into a ladies' room, I took my place at the end of the line, advancing to the rhythm of flushing toilets and banging Band-Aid-colored doors. I checked the mirror for the same blank look everyone else wore that morning. I did indeed look like a lost dog—or the plain women they get to play the secondary characters in the films of Jane Austen's books. Brown hair, blue eyes, medium height. When I looked happy, there was a certain spirit in my eyes. I gave up on the mirror, first in line now, alert for the next open door.

Perhaps men who actually liked secondary Jane Austen character types existed out there. Maybe the person who played the pompous Mr. Rushworth would like me. I tried to hurry, conscious of the impatient line, but once locked inside the stall I indulged self-pity as I remembered my new grief. In the chaos of the yard sale I held to finance the purchase of my airline ticket, I lost the box of books my mother had collected for me. But not just books; I'd lost my mother's voice. And I'd lost her voice through my own carelessness.

Outside my stall, the persistent tapping of heels on tile floor and the starting of hand dryers pushed me forward. I washed my hands, hoping my appearance had transformed, unsurprised to find the secondary character still in possession of my mirror. The traffic in the corridor pushed me toward my destiny once again, people walking while talking on phones, listening to iPods, pushing strollers, and pulling backpacks. I wished Martin could see me now.

'You should let it go,' Karen had said in the wake of my breakup. Married with two kids and her own neighborhood association, she'd forgotten about lonely Saturday nights.

'I am letting it go,' I said to no one as I stepped out of the path of a golf cart transporting people to their gate. I was letting everything go.

*   *   *

Vera waited at the gate for the flight, her wrinkles and liver spots more apparent in the airport light. I'd camped out in Vera's office several times to pose pointed questions designed to understand Literature Live, but each time Vera would disclose a beginner detail, like, productions are staged in Newton Priors, an English manor house restored to the period, and Monday and Tuesday are the days off. Then she would dart off on a tangent about how whales were getting whacked out by the navy's sonar. I liked Vera immensely, but she distracted easily. I removed the ridiculously heavy bag of books she used to save my seat. 'A little light reading.' I groaned, pulling a random sample out of the bag: Real Estate for Dummies. 'What's this for?'

Vera focused through the bottom half of her glasses. 'Oh, that's so I can figure out how to do the extension.'

'What extension?' I asked. Extension implied expiration. Did they not have a lease? Did I dare board a plane to fly into a novel that might have no setting? With one foot in Dallas, the other on a departing plane, I would do the big-time splits or splash into the Atlantic. And be eaten by sharks. 'Do you not have a lease on your venue?' I asked, my voice pitched higher than normal.

In a gesture of nonchalance meant to downplay any potential drama implied by my tone, Vera shrugged. 'We have an agreement,' she said, uncrossing and recrossing her legs away from me.

'When does it expire?' I sounded like the parent.

'Sometime in May.' Vera cringed as if expiration dates were distasteful.

'The May that comes before June? The May that already happened?'

Vera rolled her eyes. 'I'm sure I told you we need an extension of our agreement to use Newton Priors, the country house where we have held our festival for the past thirty years.'

I paused to reconsider the security of an empty apartment in Dallas. 'How long before we're thrown into the street?'

'Don't be silly, Lily.' She smiled at her rhyme and then straightened and faced me. Her hair pulled back, she resembled a ballet master. 'You know neither Lady Weston, our patroness, nor the history of this organization. Don't fret about matters you don't understand.'

'I took a real estate class, so I understand more than you think.'

'Well then, you can help me figure it all out.' Vera opened her novel. 'An actress with a real estate degree, interesting.'

A fat couple holding hands watched CNN, Starbucks balanced on their armrests. A businessman with a heavy briefcase took the last seat opposite me. 'Does the Randolph Department have anything to do with this lease renewal?'

'Yes. And it's not exactly a lease. It's an agreement.'

I pictured terms of the festival's use penciled on a paper napkin. The businessman across from me spoke on his cell phone, his grown-up manner reminding me of Karen's husband. 'FYI, Vera, I took one class, not a degree.' She'd blown things up—for the second time. Which brought me to my newest worry: Did Vera believe I was a professional actress? I had misled her about my acting background, but