Eligible

  “Lydia is known in the family for her subtlety,” Liz said, and in reply, Lydia raised her middle finger. “Nice to meet you, Ham,” Liz said.

  IT WAS AGAIN Liz’s turn to drive her father to physical therapy, and no sooner had they pulled out of the driveway of the Tudor than Mr. Bennet said, “The reason your mother wants you to give Cousin Willie a chance is that she thinks his money will save us. Don’t listen to her.”

  “Save you how?”

  “It turns out my time in the hospital was frightfully expensive.”

  “How much?”

  “It’s hardly your concern, but since you asked, let’s see. The surgery was a hundred and twenty-two thousand, not counting the anesthesia. It was three thousand a day to stay at that elegant five-star hotel known as Christ Hospital. Then there’s a little something called a doctor fee, and that was another seven thousand. Shall I go on?”

  “Isn’t most of it covered by health insurance?”

  “Your mother and I don’t have health insurance. Neither of us has had a serious ailment before now.”

  “Oh my God, you don’t have health insurance?” Liz was truly astonished, and it occurred to her to pull over, but then what? Nothing would change, and they’d be late for physical therapy.

  “Let me be clear,” Mr. Bennet said. “If Willie offered to pay all our bills this instant, it wouldn’t be incentive enough for you to endure his company.” Despite Liz’s growing panic, Mr. Bennet sounded practically nonchalant.

  “Lydia and Kitty and Mary must not have health insurance, either, right?” Liz said. “I always assumed they were on yours.” Though, as she considered it, she realized that both Mary and Kitty were probably too old for this to be true. As she merged from Dana Avenue onto Interstate 71, Liz said, “Maybe you should take out a mortgage on the house.”

  “My dear, the house is mortgaged.”

  “I thought Pop-pop and Granny sold it to you for a dollar.”

  “That was thirty years ago, and there are seven of us in this family. I’ve indulged your sisters and mother for far too long.”

  “When did you get the mortgage?”

  “Eight years? Ten?” Mr. Bennet invoked the number as neutrally as if he were trying to recall how much time had elapsed since he’d last visited Europe.

  “Do you and Mom have an investment advisor?”

  “I’m our investment advisor.”

  “What does Mr. Meyer do?”

  “Our taxes, and none too adeptly, but we’ve put up with his incompetence for so long that it seems disloyal to go elsewhere.”

  “Then at least you’ve been paying taxes?”

  “Through the nose.”

  “How much is your mortgage payment each month, and how much do you have in savings?”

  “You need not worry about that, Lizzy.”

  “Yet Mom thinks I should bail out the family by, like, whoring myself to Willie? Just for the sake of argument, if I called him and said I’d changed my mind, then what? Would I say, ‘And by the way, do you mind transferring a hundred thousand dollars, or four hundred thousand, or however much it is, into my parents’ bank account?’ ”

  “I’m not sure your mother’s thought it through that clearly. It’s the general proximity to Willie’s money that appeals to her.”

  “Is this a plan Mom and Aunt Margo hatched together?”

  “Margo doesn’t know about our financial predicament, nor do any of your sisters, and you mustn’t mention it to them. I’m in no mood for histrionics. But, yes, Margo does like the idea of you and Willie. My protests fell on deaf ears.”

  “So what will you do about the bills?”

  “When you’re as old as I am, you know that situations have a way of sorting themselves out.”

  “Wait, when does your Medicare kick in?”

  “On my sixty-fifth birthday,” Mr. Bennet said. “It’s a shame I didn’t think to schedule my myocardial infarction for six months from now, isn’t it?”

  Liz sighed. “I hate to even suggest this, but you could take out a second mortgage.”

  “We have one.” Again, her father delivered the information matter-of-factly; when she looked across the front seat, he appeared less sheepish than she might have anticipated.

  “Jesus, Dad,” she said.

  “I’d volunteer to have a hit man off me, but our life insurance policies have lapsed, so I’d be of no more use dead than I am living.”

  “There must be someone at the hospital we can talk to,” Liz said. “There’s no way you’re the first person to be treated there without insurance.” Her father said nothing, and Liz added, “Because correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you basically headed for foreclosure on the house?”

  “Let’s not borrow problems.”

  “This is almost making me think I should date Willie.”

  With certainty, Mr. Bennet said, “Not even if we become paupers begging in the street.”

  ACCORDING TO JANE, Caroline Bingley had at last discovered a sushi restaurant in Cincinnati that met her standards and had invited Jane to join her there for lunch. Just us 2, none of your sisters, Caroline had specified in a text to Jane that morning that Liz had seen while Jane was in the shower, and Liz had tried not to experience the doubly insulting sting of being excluded by a person she didn’t care for.

  “I wonder if she’s sniffing you out as a sister-in-law,” Liz said as she passed off her father’s car keys to Jane. If Caroline was, Liz thought without true optimism, perhaps Chip could be the one to save the Bennet family from financial ruin. Although Liz was still rattled by the conversation with her father, and didn’t realistically see how she could honor his wish to keep its contents private even from Jane, this didn’t seem like the moment to repeat them.

  “I’m pretty sure Caroline just wants to hang out,” Jane said. The sisters’ eyes met, and Jane whispered, “Lizzy, he told me last night that he loves me.”

  “Oh my God,” Liz said. “I knew it! Did you say it back?”

  Jane seemed bashful but very pleased. She nodded. Still whispering, she said, “It’s crazy, right? We’ve only known each other a few weeks.”

  Beneath her pleasure for Jane, Liz felt a stab of envy; she and Jasper did not say it, after sixteen years. Once, more than a decade before, during an overwrought conversation following a few months of not speaking, Jasper had said to her, “I love you in my life,” and she’d replied, “I love you in mine.” It had been a triumphant and horrible moment, never replicated.

  Trying to sound lighthearted, Liz said to Jane, “When you know, you know.”

  TALIA GOLDFARB, THE executive editor of Mascara, had sent Liz an email that read, Woman who dares? A link led Liz to an article mentioning the first female Chinese astronaut—apparently known as a taikonaut—and below the link, Talia had written, Also how was interview w/ K. de Bourgh?

  After sending yet another email to Kathy de Bourgh’s publicist, Liz looked up the cost of various medical procedures and calculated that her father’s hospital bill was roughly $240,000. The next tasks, she thought, were to find a mortgage statement; to determine how much her parents had in savings; and to make an appointment with someone in Christ Hospital’s billing department. She was walking down the steps from her bedroom to the second floor to see if it might be an opportune time to root around in her father’s study when her cellphone rang. She hurried back upstairs to where she’d left the phone on her desk, saw that the caller was Jane, and answered by asking, “How was lunch?”

  “Oh, Lizzy.” Jane’s voice was tremulous. “I fainted at the restaurant, and they’ve brought me to the ER.”

  “Wait, are you okay? What happened.”

  There was a long silence. Then, so quietly Liz almost couldn’t hear her, Jane said, “I’m pregnant.”

  LIZ HAD FIRST been made aware of her older sister’s exceptional goodness in 1982, when Jane was in second grade and Liz in first. May Fete, which was an annual celebration for the elementary school stu
dents at Seven Hills, was to occur on a Friday afternoon early in the month, and Liz was ecstatic with anticipation at the thought of the Cakewalk, Balloon Pop, and Goldfish Toss.

  Jane fell ill with chicken pox a full week before the festivities. Due to the length of time necessary for symptoms to develop, it was impossible that she transmitted the virus to Liz, but someone did, and on the day of May Fete itself, Liz was febrile and profoundly itchy. Most of Jane’s lesions had healed by then, and since she was back in school, there was no medical reason for her to skip the event. That she did so was entirely voluntary, an act of solidarity that even at the time Liz regarded with wonder. Were the situation reversed, Liz would without question have attended May Fete. But Jane was calmly insistent, saying to their befuddled mother, “If Lizzy is staying home, I am, too.” She added, “Next year, we can go together.”

  That evening, Jane and Liz ate mugs of peppermint ice cream sitting side by side in Liz’s bed while Liz wore white cotton gloves meant to discourage scratching; then Jane read aloud from Frog and Toad Together, and they went to sleep at eight o’clock. Despite the frenzy of excitement May Fete continued to provoke in Liz for several more years, when she recalled it in adulthood, what she remembered more than any bounce house she’d jumped inside or trinket she’d acquired was the kindness of her sister.

  REVELATORY AS IT was, Jane’s news had not been shared in a way that invited further questioning. She merely told Liz she had passed out for just a minute or two and, although she was sure that she was fine, the doctors wanted to run a few tests before releasing her. She was at Christ Hospital, she said, and had seen Chip briefly, before he got summoned to another patient, but he was not the one treating her. Caroline was still with her. And Liz mustn’t tell anyone else in the family.

  “I’ll be there as fast as I can,” Liz said.

  It was only upon hanging up that Liz realized she was both alone in the house and without a car: Jane had taken their father’s Cadillac to meet Caroline, their parents were having lunch at the country club, and their sisters were God knew where. Liz considered texting Mary, Kitty, or Lydia but decided against it because of their unreliability and indiscretion. She next considered taking a bus, but she was entirely unfamiliar with the routes, and finally, she considered calling a taxi, which was something she had never done in Cincinnati and therefore was uncertain could be accomplished with efficiency. Then, decisively, she changed into running shorts, a sports bra, and a tank top. She laced up her turquoise-and-orange sneakers, found her sunglasses, grabbed a baseball cap from Kitty’s room, chugged a glass of water as she stood by the kitchen sink, and hurried outside. It was just after one o’clock and ninety-six degrees; Christ Hospital was four and a half miles away, according to the directions on her phone, so she estimated it should take her thirty-five minutes to get there.

  Unlike when she ran with Jane, Liz took her phone; she stuck it between her underwear and hip, but even before she reached the street, it fell onto the driveway. So she clutched it, heading west on Grandin Road, which was the same route she took each morning with Jane; she even passed the country club, where, presumably, her parents were midway through their pseudo-healthy Caesar salads. How much, Liz wondered for the first time, were the country club’s annual fees?

  At Madison Road, instead of turning right, she made a left toward O’Bryonville, passing the antiques stores and clothing boutiques. The air was thick, and the sun felt aggressive, possibly malevolent.

  So Jane was pregnant; Jane was pregnant. The most immediate question, of course, was whether this development was attributable to the sperm donor or Chip. If it was the sperm donor, Liz thought, Jane would have conceived eight weeks earlier, in which case wouldn’t she have known? Then Liz recalled Jane’s hesitation about Chip, in spite of her obvious attraction to him—had she known? And her comments about moving to Cincinnati—those, too, could have been hints at her condition, though it was equally likely she’d want to stay in town in order to raise a child with Chip or, if she was a single mother, to avoid the expense and hassle of New York. Either way, between Chip and an anonymous donor, Liz couldn’t say which was preferable. Complications were sure to arise from both.

  Passing the Gothic church of Saint Francis de Sales, where Liz went south on Woodburn Avenue, she was sweating more than she ever had in her entire life. The potential irony of fainting on the way to see Jane after Jane had fainted didn’t escape Liz; and yet, despite the heat and the fatigue in her muscles from already having run that morning, adrenaline kept her focused. A baby—after all this time, Jane was to be the mother of a baby!

  East McMillan, which was the widest and busiest thoroughfare on Liz’s run thus far—there were few pedestrians and many cars—shimmered in the sun. Kitty’s baseball cap was royal blue, with a University of Kentucky logo, though UK was a school no one in their family had attended, and Liz wondered if the cap was making her head warmer. Removing it didn’t seem to help matters, however, and on the Reading Road overpass, she donned it again. She considered slowing to a walk, but Auburn Avenue wasn’t far off, and once she reached it, she was practically there.

  By the time the enormous brick edifice of Christ Hospital came into view, Liz felt that time had collapsed and she had been running for several years through a stasis of heat. Behind her sunglasses, perspiration fell into her eyes, making it difficult to see. Glancing at the map on her phone, she followed Auburn Avenue to Mason Street and curved toward Eleanor Place and the entrance of the emergency room. Just outside its automatic door, beneath the porte cochere, she stopped and bent, setting her hands on her knees, to catch her breath.

  “Liz?” said a male voice, and Liz stood up straight. Sweat was dripping from all the usual places, her temples and the back of her neck and her armpits, but also from a range of body parts less commonly associated with thermoregulation, including her kneecaps. She removed her sunglasses to wipe her eyes with the heels of her hands, and a droplet of sweat flew through the air and landed on the forearm of Fitzwilliam Darcy’s white coat; she saw it happen, and she was certain that he did, too. In a tone that fell somewhere between confusion and disapproval, he said, “What are you doing here?”

  Only at this moment did her choice to run to the hospital appear strange as opposed to merely uncomfortable. It seemed difficult to avoid the truth, though surely the entire truth wasn’t necessary. Still breathing unevenly, she said, “Jane fainted, and they brought her to the ER. But I think she’s fine. What are you doing here?”

  “Seeing a patient. Does Jane have a history of syncope?”

  “If that’s the same as fainting, then no.”

  “It is a very hot day. And not the time most people would choose to go running.”

  “Only mad dogs and Englishmen, I hear,” Liz said. “But there were no cars at our house. Do I go through there?” She gestured toward the automatic door.

  “I’ll go with you,” Darcy said, and as they walked inside, he added “Jane’s thirty-nine?”

  “Yes.” In spite of the other subjects preoccupying her, Liz couldn’t help noting that her sister’s age must have been a topic of discussion between Chip and Darcy.

  “If she’s generally in good health, I suspect it’s heat syncope,” Darcy said. They paused at a reception desk, and Darcy said, “I’m Dr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, and I need to find a patient named Jane Bennet.”

  The receptionist typed briefly on her keyboard before saying, “Room 108.” Neither Liz nor Darcy spoke as they continued walking. At a set of double doors, Darcy held a badge on a lanyard around his neck up to a sensor, and the doors opened toward them. They were in a wide hall and had no sooner rounded a corner than they saw Caroline Bingley, who wore such a peculiar expression—it seemed to be a combination of mirth and fury, but was that even possible?—that Liz had the hysterical thought that Jane might have died. “Is she okay?” Liz asked with alarm.

  Caroline’s eyes narrowed. Glaring, she said, “Congratulations, Auntie Liz.”


  WHEN LIZ PULLED back the curtain at the entrance to Jane’s small room, she saw her sister in a bed whose mattress was set at a semi-reclined angle. Jane wore a hospital gown (Liz hadn’t expected the change of clothes, which somehow made Jane’s status as a patient official), and a tube inserted into a vein at her left inner elbow delivered clear liquid. Quietly, almost silently, Jane was crying. The sisters’ eyes met, and Jane brought a tissue to her nose. “Oh, Lizzy,” she said. “What have I done?”

  Liz climbed onto the bed beside Jane and set an arm around her. “I stink,” Liz said. “Just to warn you.”

  Briefly, Jane appeared to forget her distress. “Did you go to CrossFit?”

  “I ran here,” Liz said. “There were no cars at home. Are you okay?”

  Jane’s lower lip quivered.

  “Not to put you on the spot, but is it Chip’s or from IUI?”

  A few seconds passed, then Jane shook her head, unable to speak. After another interval of silence followed by an enormous sniff, Jane said, “Everything was so chaotic with Dad’s surgery. I kept meaning to buy a test, to see if the last round at the clinic had worked. Then I met Chip, and we were having such a good time that suddenly it seemed like maybe it’d be better if I wasn’t pregnant.”

  “So it’s not Chip’s?” Liz said.

  “They’re going to do an ultrasound to figure out how far along I am. Anything is possible, I guess, but we’ve been using condoms.”

  “Does he know you’re pregnant?”

  Jane sighed. “At the restaurant, the EMT asked if I could be, and I said maybe, but I didn’t mention the donor stuff. Of course, Caroline heard, and she told Chip before I had a chance. I think she called him from her car as I was riding in the ambulance. So he found me, and he was very sweet and worried. I wasn’t even sure I was pregnant at that point because they hadn’t done the blood test. But I felt like I had to explain to him about the IUI, and he was a little shocked, and then he got called away for a stab wound before we could finish the conversation. That was an hour ago.”