Eligible (10 page)

While Liz had wondered the same thing, she wasn’t sure Jasper knew Mrs. Bennet well enough—they’d met only once, years before—to have earned the right to ask. “She and the other women are trying to get donations for the silent auction,” Liz said. “And the proceeds from the auction go to a shelter for homeless teenagers. It’s not total society-lady fluffiness.”

“Okay, now you’re making me feel like a bad person. But doesn’t your mother know I need my Nin?”

Liz smiled. “You know I’m here for my dad, not my mom. Besides, you kept me waiting fourteen years. Surely you can wait two more months.”

“What kind of jackass would keep Liz Bennet waiting for fourteen years?” Jasper said. “If I ever met that guy, I’d punch his lights out.”

WHEN CAROLINE BINGLEY
and Fitzwilliam Darcy walked through the door of Charlotte’s downtown apartment, the sight of Darcy rattled Liz more than she wished to admit.

“Sorry,” Jane murmured to Liz—Chip and Jane had indeed decided to start their evening at Charlotte’s—as the newest arrivals headed into the kitchen to obtain drinks. “Are you okay?”

Liz squared her shoulders. “Of course.”

But Darcy’s comment at the Lucases’ barbecue about Liz’s ostensibly single status—
I suppose it would be unchivalrous to say I’m not surprised—
had echoed unpleasantly in Liz’s head during the last week. Could it have been his spontaneous attempt at wit? Or in their brief encounter, had he taken note of some off-putting feature of her presentation—disgustingly bad breath, say—that no one, even Jane, had ever felt comfortable mentioning? In New York, Liz rarely dwelled on the contours of her romantic life, but in Cincinnati, the irregularity of her arrangement with Jasper had come into sharper focus. Depending on how long Susan’s grandmother took to die, it could be several more years before Jasper and Susan officially divorced and, Liz imagined, she and Jasper moved in together. Eventually, in some low-key ceremony, they would marry. It seemed plausible she’d be the last of her sisters to wed, but Liz didn’t share her mother’s view of matrimony as a race. After all, she already had a companion to reliably talk things over with and another body in the bed to reliably curl against, and weren’t those marriage’s truest perquisites?

And yet, with regard to Jasper, Liz wasn’t impervious to self-doubt. At a co-worker’s wedding, when filling out a form that required her to declare her marital status or identify an emergency contact (she always wrote Jane’s name), or if otherwise confronted with evidence of choices she’d made without necessarily having recognized them as such in the moment—these circumstances all gave her pause. In recent weeks, as she’d repeatedly bumped into former classmates or old family friends, the proof was ample that other people’s choices had been different. A few days before, she had met Charlotte for a drink at Don Pablo’s, which had once been their favorite restaurant, and as Liz took a sip of her pomegranate margarita, she realized that at the adjacent table, standing up to leave, was their Seven Hills classmate Vanessa Krager, as well as a bald man who appeared to be Vanessa’s husband and four children between the ages of five and twelve who appeared to be their offspring. How was this mathematically possible? And wasn’t there, in Vanessa’s avid reproduction, something unseemly, some announcement of narcissism or aggression? It was generally less shocking to Liz that twenty years after high school she was still her essential self, the self she’d grown up as, unencumbered by spouse or child, than that nearly everyone else had changed, moved on, and multiplied. After moderately warm greetings, introductions, and updates (Vanessa was working part-time doing billing for a chiropractor, the family was soon due at the ten-year-old’s piano recital), Vanessa said, “Liz, I read your interview with Jillian Northcutt. Do you think Hudson Blaise cheated on her?”

Five years earlier, after the dissolution of one of Hollywood’s then-most-famous marriages, Liz had been the first journalist to interview the actress Jillian Northcutt post-split. That this remained Liz’s best-known article was slightly embarrassing—the entirety of the interview, which had happened in a hotel suite, had lasted eighteen minutes and occurred in the presence of not only Jillian Northcutt’s publicist and personal assistant but also the publicist’s assistant, a silent manicurist, and an equally silent pedicurist. While the encounter had paid dividends in subsequent cocktail party conversations, and had even landed Liz on several entertainment talk shows, she actually felt sorry for Jillian Northcutt because of the degree of prurience she inspired.

To Vanessa, Liz said, “I think the only people who really know what went wrong are the two of them.”

Insistently, Vanessa said, “But he and Roxanne DeLorenzo were together like a month later!” At this point, Vanessa’s husband said, “V, we gotta go,” and Charlotte said, “Great to see you, Vanessa,” and then the family departed in a commotion that included spilled rice from a polystyrene take-home container, tears, and intersibling violence.

When they were gone, Charlotte and Liz looked at each other, and at exactly the same time, Liz said, “There but for the grace of God go I,” and Charlotte said, “Should I freeze my eggs?”

“Jinx?” Liz said.

When Charlotte laughed—Liz hadn’t been sure she would—Liz was reminded once again of how much she liked her friend.

But if Liz’s aversion to having children was clear to her, she was less certain about her romantic status. At times, she wondered why no one besides Jasper had ever truly captured her heart or, perhaps more to the point, why she hadn’t captured anyone else’s. Because even the half dozen men she’d dated casually—they had ended things as often as she had or had seemed less than devastated when she initiated the breakup.

These were the unsettling thoughts swirling in Liz’s mind as the various guests at Charlotte’s apartment procured drinks and greeted one another. In addition to the Bennet sisters and the Bingley contingent, Charlotte had invited a friend of hers from Procter & Gamble whose name was Nathan; he’d brought along his boyfriend, Stephen. Initially, Liz managed to talk exclusively to Nathan and Stephen, whom she hadn’t previously met, but after a twenty-minute stretch in which she didn’t even glance in Darcy’s direction, she found herself right beside Caroline Bingley.

Caroline was regarding Liz with what the latter woman took to be a rude scrutiny; given that Caroline was the sister of Jane’s new beau, Liz suppressed her own impulse to rudely stare back. Smiling, she said, “Liz Bennet. Jane’s sister. We met on the Fourth of July.”

Caroline’s pretty features (blue eyes, the lightest smattering of freckles, a delicate and just barely upturned nose) contorted slightly. She said, “Did we?”

Oh, for Christ’s sake,
Liz thought.
No wonder you and Darcy are friends.
“Just briefly,” Liz said. “When you told me you were having trouble remembering if you’re in Cincinnati, Cleveland, or Columbus. You’re in Cincinnati, by the way.”

In an unfriendly tone, Caroline said, “Yes, I’ve figured that out.”

A pause ensued, and then Liz said, “I hear you’re Chip’s manager. Do you have other clients or do you just work with him?”

“I’m really selective about who I take on,” Caroline said. “There’s an amazingly talented nineteen-year-old actress who’s been in some indie films, and now one of the networks is interested in creating a sitcom for her. That’s the kind of person I work with—not, like, whatever random dude is juggling puppies on TV this week.”

Liz said, “So reality-TV stars, but only of the finest quality.”

Caroline blinked, saying nothing, and Liz added, “What’s her name?”

Caroline seemed confused.

“The nineteen-year-old,” Liz said. “What’s her name? I sometimes write about celebrities, so I might know who she is.”

“Oh. Ella Brandy.”

“And what has she been in?”

Caroline shook her head, and it was unclear to Liz whether the gesture contained condescension or evasiveness. “The one that’s getting a ton of buzz has shown at festivals, but it’s not in theaters yet.” Caroline didn’t ask about the context in which Liz wrote about celebrities. Instead, Caroline said, “Yeah, when I tell people in Cincinnati I’m a manager, they assume I work at a fast-food restaurant.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Liz said. “Although I have always wondered what a manager does. I get what the agent does, and I get what the publicist does, but the manager seems, I don’t know—like an advice giver? A glorified friend?” Caroline narrowed her eyes suspiciously, and it occurred to Liz that she might have overstepped the bounds of feigned politeness. She added, “I was in L.A. last spring for a—” but at that moment, Charlotte tapped a fork against her wineglass and the room quieted.

“There’s been a motion to divide Charades teams into sisters versus everyone else,” Charlotte said.

People chuckled, and Mary said, “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“But unfair in your favor, presumably,” Darcy said. He was standing about ten feet from Liz, where he’d been talking to Chip and Jane. “Since families have their own shorthand.”

It wasn’t that he was wrong but, rather, that he spoke in such an obnoxious tone. Loudly, Liz said, “I’m up for Bennets against the rest of you.”

Charlotte grinned. “Game on.”

AFTER CHARLOTTE HAD
distributed paper and pens, the newly assembled teams retreated to separate corners of the living room to generate their phrases in hushed tones.

“Eligible,”
Kitty suggested immediately, and Liz shook her head. “Too easy. Tom Cruise?”

This time it was Lydia who gave Liz a withering look. “Tom Cruise is old and creepy.”

“Frida Kahlo?” Mary said.

Lydia said, “Is that a lesbian?”

“Maybe we should do a movie,” Jane said.

“Dirty Dancing,”
Kitty said, and Liz said, “Definitely.” It would be truly gratifying, she thought, if Darcy was the person forced to act it out. After Jane ripped the place where she’d written
Dirty Dancing
from the larger sheet of paper, they were able to decide on additional phrases with less dispute.

The other team wasn’t as efficient, though as Darcy had pointed out, they did not all know one another well. In addition to Darcy himself, the team was composed of Caroline, Chip, Charlotte, Nathan, and Stephen.

When the teams convened around the living room table, they determined through a coin flipped by Chip that Team Bennet would go first. Mary selected a scrap of folded paper from the pile on the table, read it, and frowned. “I barely know what this is.”

“No talking,” Caroline said, and Liz said, “Just start, Mary. The clock’s ticking.”

Mary held up one palm and with the other fist mimed cranking a silent-film camera.

“Movie!” Kitty and Lydia shouted together.

Mary held up four fingers.

“Four words,” Jane said. “You’re doing great.”

Mary paused and thought.

“For God’s sake, Mary,” Lydia said. “Get over yourself.”

Mary held up four fingers again, and Liz said, “Fourth word.”

Mary flung her hands out from her waist as if shooing away a swarm of insects. “A grass skirt?” Liz ventured. “Elvis Presley?
Blue Hawaii
?”

Mary shook her head and repeated the gesture.

“Going pee!” Kitty shouted. “Peeing everywhere! Shitting in your pants!”

“Exploding with diarrhea!” Lydia cried. “Pepto-Bismol! Having your period!” As Mary shook her head sternly and the two youngest sisters giggled, Liz abruptly understood the nature of the discomfort that had been thrumming within her since Caroline Bingley and Fitzwilliam Darcy had entered Charlotte’s apartment: What would have been a night of inconsequential silliness was now unfolding before the judgmental gaze of outsiders. Thus, the game resembled an audition in which Darcy and Caroline’s negative impressions of Cincinnati would either be confirmed or contradicted. But why did the duo deserve, simply by reason of their imperiousness, for everyone present to strive to win their favorable opinion? Or no, not everyone—certainly not Lydia and Kitty—and if the youngest sisters’ indifference to the outsiders humiliated Liz, it was her own humiliation that she found infuriating. Let Caroline and Darcy think badly of Cincinnati and its inhabitants! Why should she care? But, unaccountably, she did.