Eligible

  Darcy was looking at her with seriousness. He said, “If I told you again that I was interested in you—do you think it would be a good idea?”

  Liz nodded. She tried to keep her voice steady as she said, “I’m old enough to know that sometimes you don’t get a second chance.”

  “My darling—” Darcy lifted his palm from her arm to her cheek, and she leaned into it; she thought she might weep, and closed her eyes. “I would—I will—give you as many chances as you need. My feelings for you have never changed. And all the mushy things I was too cowardly to say before, they’re just as true now. You’re different from any woman I’ve ever met. Even when you’re arguing with me, you’re easy to be around. And those times you came over to my apartment—those were the most fun I’ve ever had.”

  Liz opened her eyes. “You look at diseased brains all day. No offense, but your bar for fun might be kind of low.”

  “No,” Darcy said. “It’s not. I used to watch from the window as you left in your running clothes, and I’d think, One of the times she leaves will be the last time I see her. It destroyed me. I didn’t want us to have a last time, and that was how I realized I’d fallen in love with you.”

  Such compliments—they were thrilling but almost impossible to absorb in this quantity, at this pace. It was like she was being pelted with a magnificent hail, and she wished she could save the individual stones to examine later, but they’d exist with such potency only now, in this moment. And in any case, the clock was ticking.

  She still was holding her bouquet, and in her plum-colored silk pumps, she crouched, setting the flowers on the uneven ground; then she stood again and extended both her arms toward him. After a very brief hesitation, during which Liz silently summoned the guiding spirit of Kathy de Bourgh, he took her hands in his.

  “Darcy,” she said. “Fitzwilliam Cornelius Darcy the Fifth. I know your middle name because I googled you. Is that creepy or impressive?”

  “Will it hurt your feelings if I say neither?”

  She grinned. “Fitzwilliam Cornelius Darcy, I admire you so much. The work you do, the way you literally save lives, how principled you are—you’re the most principled person I know. Even if it means you’re insulting sometimes, you’re the only person I know, me included, who never lies. And you’re amazingly smart, and when you’re not telling harsh truths, you’re incredibly gracious and kind and decent. I love you, Darcy—I ardently love you. And I want to know—” One of them was, or maybe both of them were, shaking; their clasped hands trembled, and inside her chest, her heart thudded. She gazed up at him and said, “I want to know, will you marry me? Will you do me the honor of becoming my husband?”

  She hadn’t known he could smile so broadly. He said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “I don’t have a ring,” she said, “but here.” She bent her head and kissed the lower part of the ring finger of his left hand, which was still joined to her right one.

  He was leaning his face down to her, and she was lifting hers to him, when she said, “Oh, and I’ll totally sign a prenup. Obviously, your family has millions of dollars, and mine is borderline destitute, but that has nothing to do with why I want to marry you.”

  “How romantic. I think we can figure out those details down the line.”

  “And I realize I’ll need to move to Cincinnati. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t even mind. The irony, huh?”

  “Liz?”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you stop talking for a second so I can kiss you properly?”

  Liz smirked. “As long as you’re not afraid of messing up both our lipstick.”

  “That’s actually the one cosmetic I seem not to be wearing right now,” he said, and then—outside the lodge, behind the boulder, he in a tuxedo and she in a lavender bridesmaid dress—their faces met and they kissed at such length that the kiss contained multiple phases, including the one in which they both were smiling, practically laughing, and the one in which she forgot where she was.

  When at last they paused, he said, “I guess it would be a violation of our Eligible contracts to go to my room right now.”

  They were eyeing each other, silently conferring, as Anne Lee came around the side of the boulder, followed closely by a camera crew. Darcy and Liz instinctively stepped apart.

  “You guys, your mics are down,” Anne said in a brisk tone. “We need to fix them.” Already, a sound guy was reaching inside the top of Liz’s dress; he was doing it as professionally as possible, which still didn’t eliminate the weirdness. “Did you disconnect your mics on purpose?” Anne asked.

  Liz said, “No,” just as Darcy said, “Yes.”

  Anne looked between them. “Why’d you disconnect them?”

  “We wanted privacy,” Liz said.

  “Are you two involved?” Anne asked.

  After another pause, Darcy said, “That hardly seems relevant.”

  “I know you are,” Anne said. “I just saw you making out.”

  Was she bluffing?

  Liz said, “Then I guess that answers your question.”

  “How long have you been hooking up?”

  Yet again, there was a silence, and with undisguised irritation, Anne said, “Fine. We need you both at the reception right now.”

  As they followed the path back to the courtyard, Liz could sense Darcy behind her, and her body quivered with joy. Hate sex, she thought gleefully. Hate sex! Except without the hate!

  The reception lasted until well past midnight, and during that time, she and Darcy were frequently near each other and rarely spoke, except to sometimes exchange banal pleasantries. “Are you having a good time?” he asked her at one point, with the utmost politeness, and she replied in kind, “I am. Are you?”

  “I am, too,” he said. They danced just once—apparently, Darcy would only slow-dance, and even then he was a bit awkward, neither of which surprised her—and they hardly talked; but she rested her head against his chest, and the solidity of him felt like the promise of their future together.

  As the various reception rituals were enacted and filmed, including Liz’s toast (ironically, her distraction seemed to make for a smoother delivery), Liz knew that the Eligible crew was only doing what they were supposed to do, what the Bennet and Bingley families had agreed to allow. But still, Liz was unwilling to grant them access to her new and wondrous romance; she loved Darcy too much to try to prove her love to anyone except him.

  INCONCLUSIVE DISCUSSIONS HAD occurred about the circumstances under which the Bennets would watch the Eligible wedding special when it aired, and the likeliest option seemed to be that Ham and Lydia would host dinner and a viewing in their living room. Liz and Darcy were still sharing his Madison Road apartment—she had left New York in February, and they had purchased but not yet moved into a recently renovated loft in downtown’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood—and Liz was frankly wary of watching with her family members. The injuries to their vanity could, she worried, be so extensive as to require triage on her part.

  As it turned out, all of the Cincinnati Bennets were caught by surprise when Jane’s first appearance came not on Eligible: Chip & Jane’s Road to the Altar but, rather, two weeks prior to the special’s debut, on Eligible: Fan Favorites’ Reunion. Though Liz had expected to need to avert her eyes as Chip kissed his way through the reunion season, he had thus far paired off only once. And while the heavy petting that had transpired in a hammock between him and Rachelle B. (not to be confused with Rachelle T.) had seemed in every way consensual, the next morning, Chip had with great sorrow told Rachelle B. that his heart was somewhere else. In the next episode, he mentioned Jane by name during a confessional, yet still neither Liz nor any other Bennets were prepared for Jane herself to show up onscreen the following week in the reunion’s penultimate episode.

  In the hot tub at the Malibu compound, the contestants were recuperating from a nude obstacle-course competition when a phone rang audibly. A contestant named Lulu sprang
from the hot tub and ran inside in her dripping bikini. From a table in the living room of the main house, she lifted the receiver of a black rotary phone that Liz felt confident was a prop; she was nearly certain that, up to that point, there had been no phone anywhere on the compound. “Chip,” Lulu called. “It’s for you!”

  Chip answered, and then the screen split and Jane appeared. She lay in a bed recognizable to Liz from their room at the Hermoso Desert Lodge.

  “It’s Jane,” Jane said. “I have some news. I know we broke up, but—” The shot widened to include her belly, which she patted. “I’m pregnant.” Chip’s jaw dropped in astonishment, and the show cut to a commercial.

  Clearly, Jane and Chip were complicit in the charade, though Liz hesitated to call Jane and ask about it because Adelaide Bennet Bingley, born three weeks before at seven pounds, two ounces, was fussy in the early evenings, and it was presently six-thirty P.M. in Los Angeles. In additional scenes, Jane and Chip declared by phone their enduring affection for each other, and Chip embarked on a long walk on the beach, an excursion marked by either (to judge from his expression) moody contemplation or gastrointestinal distress. Liz’s phone was abuzz with texts from Lydia and Kitty, who were watching with their mother at the Grasmoor (WTF! Did u know about this? Jane wasn’t really there for reunion right?). At the next commercial break, Liz could resist no longer and texted Jane: Do u know you’re on Eligible reunion right now?

  A moment later, Liz’s phone rang. “The producers wanted to introduce me during the reunion so the audience would get invested in Chip and me ending up together,” Jane said. “Are they making it convincing?

  “Actually, yes.”

  In the background, Liz could hear Adelaide’s bleat. Three days after her birth, Liz had journeyed to Los Angeles to meet her; she was a miraculous and tiny human whom Liz felt immediate devotion toward and was relieved not to be the mother of. Over the phone, Liz asked Jane, “How’s my niece?”

  “She doesn’t want to sleep unless someone’s holding her, and maybe not even then.” Jane’s voice had gone high and singsongy; she sounded blissful. “Right, Addie?” she said. “Right, baby girl? Why would anyone want to close their eyes when there’s so much to learn about the world?”

  “Here,” Liz heard Chip say. “Give her to me. And tell Liz I say hi.”

  “Are you guys watching?” Liz said.

  “We weren’t planning on it.” Jane laughed. “I mean, we already know what happens.”

  “FRED, COME QUICK!” Mrs. Bennet had shouted when she spotted her eldest daughter onscreen. “Goodness gracious, Lydia, tell your father to come at once.”

  “Dad!” Lydia shouted without rising from the sofa. “It’s an emergency.”

  Mr. Bennet wandered out of his bedroom looking unconcerned.

  “It’s Jane!” Mrs. Bennet pointed at the television. “Right there.”

  Mrs. Bennet continued exclaiming through the commercial break and into the show’s resumption, at which point Kitty said, “Mom, I can’t hear if you’re talking.”

  “I would never have left town if I’d known,” Chip was telling Jane over the phone. “Jane, I’m not the kind of man who abandons the mother of his child. I always loved you, and I always wanted to make it work.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Bennet clapped her hands. “They’re saying it’s his! I knew they would, I just knew it! It makes so much more sense this way!”

  “It’s bullshit, though,” Kitty said, and Lydia said, “Kitty, it’s called reality TV. It’s not called true TV.”

  Neither Ham nor Shane had accompanied the sisters to the Grasmoor; after bonding amid the strangeness of Palm Springs, Shane had joined Ham’s gym and the two men had taken to going out for Korean barbecue after the Thursday night class Ham taught.

  “Isn’t it funny,” Mrs. Bennet said, “that the very first episode of Eligible I’ve ever seen has my own daughter in it?”

  Mr. Bennet snorted. “It’s past time to lay that canard to rest, Sally.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Mom, you watch with us every week,” Kitty said.

  “Well, I’ve seen bits here and there but not a whole show.” Kitty, Lydia, and Mr. Bennet exchanged glances, and Mrs. Bennet said, “I haven’t! You know me, always popping up and down.”

  In fact, as usual, she had been seated for the entire episode, which was well into its second hour; she had been perusing her housewares catalogs but mostly during commercials.

  “I’ve never really been a TV watcher,” Mrs. Bennet said, and whether or not anyone else believed her, it was abundantly clear that she believed herself; she spoke with confidence and pleasure. She said, “I’ve always far preferred a good book.”

  “I WAS UNDER the impression that this was a terrible show,” Darcy said seven minutes into Eligible: Chip & Jane’s Road to the Altar. “But it’s literally unwatchable.”

  “Not literally,” Liz said. “Your eyeballs aren’t melting.”

  They were curled into each other on the couch, a blanket spread over them; it was early April and still cool in Cincinnati.

  With his fingertips, Darcy pulled down the skin around the sockets of his eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Liz said. “If you promise to stick with it for the next three nights, I’ll never try to get you to watch Eligible ever again.”

  Darcy grinned. “Do you think that’s tempting? It’s not like I’m obligated to watch anyway.”

  “You kind of are,” Liz said. “Because you’re in it, and so am I, and we’re the loves of each other’s lives.”

  Darcy leaned in and kissed her. “We are the loves of each other’s lives,” he said. “But that has nothing to do with Eligible.”

  What Liz didn’t yet know, but would discover imminently, was that the humiliation of Eligible: Chip & Jane’s Road to the Altar belonged primarily to her. She, her sisters, and Chip’s sisters would all appear onscreen with chyrons showing not only their names but also—perhaps in the interest of distinguishing this bevy of women—their identities, or some stereotypical version of their identities bestowed with minimal regard for fact. Brooke Bingley was “The Stay-at-Home Mom,” which was accurate enough, but Caroline Bingley was “The Romantic.” Lydia Bennet was “The Free Spirit,” Kitty was “The Entrepreneur,” Mary was “The Scholar,” and Liz (oh, how this stung!) was “The Party Girl.” Shortly after a clip in which Kitty declared, “What I’m really interested in long-term is opening a chain of salons that cater not just to physical beauty but also to inner well-being,” Liz showed up saying, “I’d describe myself as a focused, down-to-earth person,” and there ensued a montage of her gulping wine, pounding shots, and at one point not just holding but drinking from two separate champagne flutes. Which had actually happened at the wedding reception, but only because she’d picked up a glass for her mother as well as herself, her mother’s had been excessively full, and Liz had been trying to prevent it from spilling.

  Naturally, the confrontation she’d had with Caroline appeared in its entirety, contextualized in advance by Caroline trashing Liz during multiple interviews and describing with surprising frankness, if a delusion could ever be called frank, her belief that she and Darcy were meant to be together. A camera crew had, albeit without sound and from a distance of perhaps forty feet, caught Liz’s proposal to Darcy and their subsequent embrace; both were interspersed with Caroline crying furiously, as if she were observing the scene firsthand, which Liz strongly doubted had happened. But maybe weeping on-camera had been the price Caroline was required to pay in order to become the star of the next season of Eligible; the announcement of her role, reflecting the first time in Eligible history that a sibling pair had starred one after the other, would come the following week.

  Liz had assumed she wasn’t interesting enough to warrant a prominent role in the wedding special, given that she was pushing forty, was in neither a transgender nor even an interracial relationship, and didn’t don a
bikini. That she’d been mistaken might have been flattering if it weren’t so embarrassing.

  “I don’t think I can ever leave this apartment again,” she would tell Darcy. “Aren’t you mortified that people will know you’re engaged to the Party Girl?” (They were to marry in August at Knox Church. They’d considered holding the ceremony at Pemberley, just before the estate was passed off to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, but Liz had reasoned that it was her mother who cared most about the proceedings, and due to a once-unimaginable confluence of circumstances, Liz found herself the daughter best suited to making Mrs. Bennet’s every wedding dream come true. So why not?)

  Darcy would look amused. He’d say, “Who cares what anyone thinks?” He’d kiss Liz’s forehead and add, “Besides, who wouldn’t want to marry the Party Girl?”

  IT WAS MARY’S firm belief that any woman capable of satisfying her own desires—which, though not all of them knew it, was any woman anywhere—would never need to disgrace herself in the pursuit of a man. The nine-inch dildo Lydia had boasted of sounded garish, but after experimenting over the years, Mary had settled upon a sleek and ergonomic vibrator with five modes of stimulation, powered by an almost silent motor. She used it nightly before bed, and sometimes in the morning as well, after her alarm went off for her job as a sales account manager at Procter & Gamble.

  For her undergraduate degree, Mary had attended Macalester College, where she had been involved, sequentially, with two men and one woman, and the collective lesson she had learned from them was that she cared little for sex and even less for sharing a bed. Back then, before hookup websites became common, physical intimacy involved such rigmarole—you might start on meals and conversations with someone weeks or months prior to them providing you with any true gratification, and even then, gratification wasn’t guaranteed; it was all incredibly inefficient. As for sharing a bed, the other person’s snores and blanket hogging, the small talk you needed to make when going to sleep or waking up—really, what was the point? Mary preferred to spread out alone on a mattress, turning the light off or on when she pleased.