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She put out her hand. “Hi, I’m Jane.”
“No, you are not!” Mrs. Wattlesbrook said. “You are Miss Erstwhile. And you are not to talk to him, he is just a servant. For the sake of the Experience, we must be proper.”
Mrs. Wattlesbrook was reminding Jane of Miss April, the spiteful, tight-bunned, glossy-lipped, stick-cracking ballet teacher of her elementary school years. She hadn’t much cared for Miss April.
When Mrs. Wattlesbrook turned her back to give instructions to the piano player, Jane mouthed to Theodore, “Sorry.”
Theodore smiled, a fantastically broad smile that made her notice just how blue his eyes were.
“The minuet is a ceremonious, graceful dance,” said Mrs. Wattlesbrook, closing her eyes to enjoy the music the pianist drew from the keys. “It commences each ball as a means of introducing all the members of the society. Each couple takes turns in the center performing the figures. Curtsy to the audience, Miss Erstwhile, now to your partner, and begin.”
With Mrs. Wattlesbrook calling the motions, Jane wove, swerved, minced, and spun. She had thought it might be awkward dancing with a man a foot taller than her, but this was no waltz or high school slow dance. It was a smooth combination of figures, of taking hands and releasing, turning and returning.
Jane found herself giggling when she missed a step or turned the wrong way. It was a bit embarrassing, but she took comfort in the fact that she didn’t snort. Her partner smiled, apparently amused by her own amusement. Though at a formal ball they would be wearing gloves, in this informal setting their hands were bare, and she felt the calluses on his palm when he took her hand, felt him get warmer as they danced on. It was strange to touch someone like this, touch hands, feel his hand on her back, on her waist, walking her through the figures, and yet not know him at all. Never even have heard the sound of his voice.
He wrapped his hand around her waist. She blushed like a freshman.
After the minuet they practiced two country dances. The first was spunky, and she had to learn how to “skip elegantly.” She had square-danced for a sixth-grade assembly once (a tragic affair involving boyfriend #1), and the second number reminded her of a sedate Virginia reel.
“The top couple moves up and down the center and the rest wait,” explained Mrs. Wattlesbrook. “In a ball with many couples, one dance can take half an hour.”
“So that’s why Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy had time to talk,” Jane said, “as they stood there waiting their turn at the top.”
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Wattlesbrook.
Blunder, Jane thought, glancing at her partner. What must he think of her? A woman who memorized Austen books and played dress-up? She’d enjoyed a bit of flirting as they danced, but she was too embarrassed to meet his eyes again. When they finished, he left the way he’d come in.
Jane sat that night on her hard mattress in the inn’s guest room, feeling loose and pretty in her clean white chemise, her arms around her knees. The English countryside was framed by her window as though it were a painting, blue and purple, abstract in the low light. She grimaced as she thought about the dance, remembering how fun it had been until she’d spoiled it at the end. She didn’t want that for this experience. She needed a good ending, the best ending, though her imagination couldn’t dredge up exactly what that should be.
The endings of all her relationships had displaced any previous loveliness. In memory, the jokes faded, the personalities of the various boyfriends blurred together, weekend trips were truncated in thought to as long as it took her to scratch her neck. The entire relationship was condensed and reformed in her mind to be solely about its ending.
Here she was at the beginning of something, her toes curled over the edge of the diving board. She was ready to plunge. Good-bye to her awkward list of numbered boyfriends and her mutated, Austen-inspired intensity that had pushed her from one ending to another. She was determined that this vacation, this holiday, unlike any of her relationships, would have a very good ending.
Let’s glance back a moment and remember: Jane’s First Love
Alex Bipley, AGE FOUR
Alex declared to Jane’s preschool teachers, both their parents, and Cindy (the girl with self-cut bangs) that he and Jane would marry. After a rousing Easter egg hunt in the park, he ran with Jane behind a tree.
“I want to give you something that means we’ll be together forever.”
He kissed her on the lips seven times. It reminded Jane of a chicken pecking. A soft chicken.
That summer Alex’s parents moved to Minnesota. She never saw him again.
day 1
THE NEXT MORNING AFTER A huge, meaty breakfast, Jane climbed into a carriage (A carriage! she thought), her trunk fastened to the back. Mrs. Wattlesbrook stood in the doorway, dabbing a handkerchief to her dry eyes.
“Do have a good time, Miss Erstwhile, and remember to wear a wrap and bonnet when you go out!”
The day was gray, and patchy rain nudged the carriage roof. Jane watched the hilly country bounce by, a row of river trees huddling in a line. The fresh landscape encouraged her artist’s eye to see in paint colors—leaves of sap green, the distant roofs of a small town in burnt umber and cadmium red, the sky cerulean blue. They passed a gate and guard station, and rolled up an unpaved private drive. The carriage slowed then halted in front of a stately Georgian manor, yellow bricks, white gables, and sixteen facing windows. It looked clean and square and full of something secret and wonderful, a solidly wrapped present.
“That’s a fair prospect,” Jane breathed, giving herself chills.
The front doors opened and a dozen people filed out. Despite the weather, they stood patiently in two lines, blinking against the thin rainfall. From their attire, Jane guessed they were mostly house servants plus a few gardeners in rougher clothes. Theodore was difficult to miss, a head taller than any other.
The carriage lurched to a stop and gave Jane a sinking feeling in her middle. Now that it came to it, she didn’t know if she could role-play with a straight face. She was used to having clothes that touched her waist and her hips, hair loose around her face, pants with a back pocket to keep a few bucks handy, shoes that allowed her to run. She felt so ridiculously phony riding up in a carriage in this Halloween costume, pretending to be someone of note, all those servants and actors knowing she was just a sad woman with odd fantasies. She felt naked and pale in her empire-waist dress.
