Pies & Prejudice

  After my lesson is finished, Mrs. Bergson tries to get Cassidy to skate with Tristan so that Annabelle can see what they’ve been working on. Cassidy refuses, using her chicks, who are starting to arrive, as an excuse.

  “Tomorrow, then,” says Mrs. Bergson.

  “Sure,” says Cassidy. “Tomorrow.”

  She mouths the words NO WAY to me as she skates over to help Darcy set up the cones for their hockey drills. I grin and give her a thumbs-up, then go to change back into my shoes.

  Outside the rink, Stewart is waiting for me with Pip. On our way back to Half Moon Farm we make a detour through Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, just like I’d hoped.

  “What are you smiling about?” Jess asks, when we knock on her door a while later.

  “Nothing,” I tell her, wiping a telltale smear of lip gloss off Stewart’s cheek.

  Jess hasn’t been kissed yet. We don’t talk about it much, and it’s not like I’ve done a lot of it so I’m not some big expert or anything. But I know she’s still hoping that Darcy will be her first. My brother, Darcy, not Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy, of course. Sometimes I think that between book club and my family, there are just too many Darcys.

  Mrs. Delaney drives us to the store to pick up the ingredients for our bake-a-thon tomorrow. Pies & Prejudice is closing down, my friends told me, but they have one last order to fill, and it’s a big one. The British-American Society of Concord is having their annual Patriot’s Day dinner dance, and Pies & Prejudice is providing the desserts. I’m looking forward to helping out. It’s the least I can do to help repay my friends for all they’ve done for me. Even though, as my mother said, they’re not expecting me to repay them.

  We drop everything off at Cassidy’s and then hop into her van to drive over to Megan’s for our book club meeting and sleepover.

  “Go ahead into the living room,” Mrs. Wong tells us when we arrive. “Becca and Calliope aren’t here yet, and Megan’s just now hooking up the computer, so there’s no rush.”

  I left my mini laptop back in England with my mom so she could videoconference with us. It’s late there, but she said she didn’t care, she didn’t want to miss out.

  “Okay, here we go,” says Megan a couple of minutes later. She clicks on the icon to make the call, and a few seconds later my mother appears onscreen.

  “Bonjour!” she trills.

  My parents are actually in Paris this week. It’s their twentieth wedding anniversary, and they wanted to do something special.

  “Don’t you mean bonne nuit?” says my dad from somewhere offscreen. “It’s eleven o’clock over here.”

  My mother waves her hand at him. “Whatever.” She leans in toward the webcam. “You have to see our view! This hotel is phenomenal!”

  The image onscreen gives a lurch as she picks the laptop up and turns it around. I get a quick, blurred view of my dad. He’s sitting in an armchair with—what else?—a book, reading. Then the image settles, focusing on a set of French doors open to a balcony, and beyond that, the twinkling lights of Paris.

  “Ooooooooh,” everyone sighs.

  “It’s so romantic!” says Gigi. “Paris in the spring! And look—you can see the Eiffel Tower.”

  “I know!” says my mother, pulling a chair over so we can see both her and the view. “It couldn’t be more perfect.”

  “Happy anniversary,” I tell her, and everybody else wishes her a happy anniversary too.

  The front door bangs open and we all flinch.

  Becca comes in, her face as white as the Wong’s carpet. Before anyone can ask what’s up, her mother marches in behind her. She’s clutching a copy of my dad’s book, Spring Reckoning, and she’s clearly on the warpath.

  She glares at the video screen. “Phoebe Hawthorne, is that husband of yours around?”

  “Nick? He’d better be—it’s our anniversary.”

  Mrs. Chadwick doesn’t think this is funny. “Would you be good enough to get him for me?”

  My mother turns the laptop around, and my dad waves at us from his cozy seat in the corner of their hotel room.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Mrs. Chadwick demands furiously, waving the book at him.

  He gives her a blank look. “What’s the meaning of what?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Nicholas Hawthorne. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  My dad shakes his head. “Sorry, Calliope. I’m in the dark here.”

  “Hepzibah Plunkett is what I’m talking about.” She flips opens his book to a bookmarked page and starts to read:

  “ ‘Hepzibah Plunkett waddles into the tavern. Her sharp gaze rakes the room, settling finally on a small, balding man perched on an overturned ale cask. ‘Ezekiel Plunkett!’ she screeches. ‘I demand that you leave here at once! These rabble-rousers are nothing but trouble, and will be the ruin of us all.’ ‘Hepzibah, my sweet—’ her husband demurs, but his wife holds up her hand. ‘I will not hear another word!’ she tells him. ‘Will you bring shame upon our family? Risk everything, and for what—a wild dream of freedom? Come home with me now, or not another morsel of food shall you receive from my hand, and you shall bed in the barn from this day forward.’ As her husband rises meekly to his feet and obeys, Hepzibah flings a triumphant look at the gathered patriots. She marches out behind him, her enormous posterior bringing up the rear like a defiant lady-in-waiting. The door closes and the tavern erupts in raucous laughter.’ ”

  Mrs. Chadwick slams the book shut and glares at the TV screen. “How dare you!”

  We’re all open-mouthed, including my father.

  “Calliope,” he protests, “You don’t— I mean you can’t possibly think that I, that you—”

  I stare at Mrs. Chadwick, horrified. She thinks that Hepzibah Plunkett is her.

  My father shakes his head. “Calliope, I assure you, I would never, ever—”

  “Don’t you tell me what you’d never ever!” she retorts, tapping angrily on the cover of the book. “Here it is, in black and white. And to think I thought you were my friend!”

  “Calliope, hold on a second!” says my mother.

  “I will not,” Mrs. Chadwick fumes. “Come along, Becca.”

  “But Mom!” she prostests, “the sleepover!”

  “Emphasis on over.” She grabs Becca by the hand and drags her, protesting, out the front door, slamming it shut behind her.

  There’s a long silence in the living room.

  Beside me, Megan gives a tiny snort of laughter. “I really like that line about her bottom being like a defiant lady-in-waiting,” she whispers to me, and I have to smother a grin because I was thinking the same thing. But the situation isn’t funny, otherwise. Not at all.

  “I don’t know what to say,” says my dad finally.

  My mother appears onscreen, crossing the hotel room to perch on the arm of his chair. “I doubt there’s anything you could do tonight to mollify Calliope, so I suggest we let her cool off, and try and turn this into a useful discussion for our book club. Do any of you think that some of the characters in Pride and Prejudice were based on people Jane Austen knew?”

  My father starts to get up and leave, but my mother puts a restraining hand on his arm. “Stay and talk with us, Nick. Your perspective will be valuable.”

  “I don’t know about the characters,” he says cautiously, “but I do recall some advice she once gave her niece Anna, who also wanted to be a writer.” He turns to my mother. “Do you know the quote I’m talking about, Phoebe?”

  She darts offscreen again, returning a second later with a book. “I think I remember reading it in this new Austen biography.”

  “Who but Phoebe Hawthorne would bring a book about Jane Austen on an anniversary trip to Paris?” says Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid dryly.

  My mother ignores her. “Here it is. She wrote this in September, 1814, after Anna sent her some chapters of a novel she was working on. Jane wrote back: ‘You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them exactly into such a
spot as is the delight of my life. Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on.’ ”

  “That’s the one,” says my dad.

  “Wow,” I say to no one in particular. “Lucky Anna.” How cool to have Jane Austen for your aunt—and your editor. I would kill to have her read some of my stuff.

  “So what’s your point, Nicholas?” asks Mrs. Wong.

  “Just that I followed her advice in writing my novel—it’s set in a small town, and while there’s a large cast of minor characters, for the most part I focused my writer’s lens on just a handful of families.”

  My mother pats him on the shoulder. “Jane Austen would approve.”

  “But Calliope doesn’t,” says my father glumly.

  “I wonder if people ever thought Jane modeled her characters after them?” asks Jess.

  “Probably,” says Cassidy. “Lots of people in Pride and Prejudice remind me of people I know. Caroline Bingley, anyone?”

  “Stinkerbelle,” I reply.

  “Bingo.”

  “And how about Rupert Loomis?” I add. “He is such a Mr. Collins.”

  “Emma!” my mother warns.

  “Well he is. Dad thinks so too—ask him!”

  She turns to my father, who grins. My mother swats him.

  “By the way,” says Cassidy. “I’m really mad at Elizabeth Bennet.”

  “Why, honey?” asks her mother.

  “I can’t believe she’s actually starting to like that stupid Mr. Darcy! That’s not like real life at all. Who would ever like such a stuck-up creep? I mean, he actually said he wouldn’t dance with her because she’s not pretty enough. How did he put it? That she’s ‘not handsome enough to tempt me’? Gimme a break.”

  I can tell Cassidy’s still stinging from Annabelle’s “big, bad Cassidy Sloane” remark.

  We start talking about famous couples in books who start off not liking each other.

  “How about Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables?” Megan suggests.

  “That doesn’t count,” I point out. “Gilbert liked Anne from the very beginning, but she didn’t like him. With Elizabeth and Darcy, the dislike is mutual.”

  “Some scholars think Jane Austen got the idea for Elizabeth and Darcy from Shakespeare,” says my mother. “They say she was inspired by Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing, or by Kate and Petruchio from The Taming of the Shrew.”

  “Kate and Petrooshee-who?” asks Cassidy.

  “You’ll get to them eventually in school,” her mother tells her.

  “Such a fun play!” sighs Mrs. Delaney. “I played Kate in New York once, a long time ago.”

  My father, who has been leafing through my mother’s Jane Austen biography, starts to laugh.

  “What?” my mother asks.

  “Listen to this quote,” he says. “It’s from Pride and Prejudice, and it’s perfect. I should e-mail it to Calliope: ’For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn.’ ”

  We all laugh too, but a little uneasily. I glance over at Mrs. Wong, thinking of all the stuff I’ve said about her behind her back. And about Becca and Mrs. Chadwick, too.

  “On that note,” says my mother, “perhaps we should wrap this up with a handout.”

  FUN FACTS ABOUT JANE

  1) Jane was most productive as a writer when she had peace and quiet and a settled routine. During her early years at Steventon, she wrote prolifically, but that stopped when her parents abruptly announced that they were retiring and moving to Bath. For the most part, Jane preferred country life to the bustle of the city, especially when it was time to write.

  2) The years at Bath were tumultuous ones, as her father died and she and Cassandra and her mother were forced to move to ever-smaller quarters, and eventually to Southampton, where they lived for a time with her brother Frances and his wife. Her writing routine was constantly disrupted, and her productivity declined.

  3) Eventually, Jane’s brother Edward, who had been adopted by wealthy, childless relatives when he was twelve (common practice in those days, to ensure that property stayed in the family), offered them a cottage rent-free in the village of Chawton, where he had inherited a grand home. There, Jane enjoyed the most prolific years of her life.

  4) The hinge on the door to the sitting room where Jane wrote at Chawton squeaked, and according to family lore she specifically asked that it not be oiled, so that she’d be alerted to interruptions.

  5) Jane’s niece Marianne Knight recalled how her aunt, as she was doing needlework, “would mysteriously burst into laughter and hurry across the room to write something down, then return to her place.”

  6) Jane never had a study of her own, a desk of her own (besides a tiny lap desk she’d prop on a table), or even a room of her own—she shared a bedroom her entire life with her sister Cassandra. When someone entered the sitting room where she was working, she’d quickly cover the pages of her manuscript or slip them into her lapdesk.

  As I place the handout into my notebook, Jess’s mom and Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid leave to take Mrs. Bergson home. While Gigi and Mrs. Wong clear away the dishes, Megan and Jess and Cassidy head down the hall to Megan’s room, leaving me alone in the living room with my parents onscreen.

  My father blows me a kiss. “Go ahead and talk to your mom for a bit, sweetheart. I’m going to get ready for bed. It’s nearly midnight here.”

  He pads away, and my mom and I smile at each other.

  “Mom,” I whisper, “do you really think Dad based Hepzibah Plunkett on Mrs. Chadwick?”

  My mother pauses before she answers. “I don’t know, Emma,” she says finally. “I don’t fully understand how the creative process works for a writer. Perhaps a little bit, unconsciously.”

  “I mean, it’s kind of a coincidence and everything, her having a big, uh—”

  “I know.”

  My mom and I start to giggle.

  “I wish you were here,” I tell her.

  She smiles. “Me too. But a person’s twentieth wedding anniversary only comes around once in a lifetime.”

  I blow her a kiss. “I know. Happy anniversary!”

  A little while later, as we’re getting our sleeping bags all spread out downstairs in the Wongs’ enormous family room—it has a media center with actual movie theater seats and a soda machine—the door flies open and Becca comes in, breathless.

  “What did I miss?” she asks.

  Megan looks at her, surprised. “But I thought your mother said—”

  Becca flings her sleeping bag onto the floor and flops down on it. “You guys you should have been there! My dad rocks! He and my mom got into this big argument when we got home. He said it wasn’t fair for her to punish me for something that’s between her and your dad, Emma, and besides, he thinks she’s being ridiculous. So he drove me back over.”

  I never thought I’d actually be glad to see Becca Chadwick, but I am. Our evening felt sort of incomplete without her.

  “You’ve got to admit it’s pretty funny,” says Cassidy. “Hepzibah Plunkett, I mean.”

  Becca nods. “Yeah, but my mother’s kind of touchy about her, you know—”

  “Hindquarters?” says Cassidy.

  “Caboose?” says Megan.

  “Nether regions?” I offer. “Haunches? Keister?”

  “Gluteus maximus?” adds Jess.

  We all dissolve in laughter, even Becca.

  It’s so good to be home with my friends! I’ve never even tried to explain the synonym game to anyone back in England. Not even Lucy.

  The five of us stay up way too late talking and laughing, and everybody groans when Mrs. Wong comes down at four the next morning and flips on the light.

  “Rise and shine, girls! Big day ahead!”

  Somehow, we manage to get up and drag ourselves over to the Old North Bridge.

  “Oh, great,” mutters Cassidy. “Stinkerbelle is here. Figures.”

  The field
is crowded with onlookers milling around, waiting for the battle reenactment to start.

  Annabelle is standing with Tristan and Simon and their parents, along with some other people I don’t recognize. They’re young, though, and look like students, so I figure maybe they belong to Professor Berkeley. Simon told Megan he’s always dragging his history classes to famous sites around Boston.

  I see the Chadwicks arrive, and I wave to Stewart. He doesn’t see me. “Hey, Stewart!” I call, waving again. He turns and frowns, then turns away, pointedly ignoring me. The enthusiasm drains out of my wave and I lower my arm, feeling puzzled and hurt.

  “What’s going on?” asks Megan. “Did you two have a fight?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  The Chadwicks stroll over to join the Berkeleys, and Annabelle starts talking to Stewart. He pretends he doesn’t see me watching them. Mrs. Chadwick points at something a little closer to the bridge, and as she heads off toward it everybody but Stewart—who’s squatting down to tie his shoe—follows her.

  I grab Cassidy by the arm. “I may need backup,” I tell her. “You guys too. Come on. Let’s go see what’s up.”

  Cassidy and I start across the field, with Megan and Jess and Becca right behind us.

  “What’s going on, Stewart?” I ask when we reach him.

  Wordlessly, he holds up his cell phone. On it is the picture of me with Rupert Loomis under the mistletoe. My heart sinks, and I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don’t even have to ask where he got it. Stinkerbelle is obviously still bent on revenge.

  I force myself to laugh. “Stewart, come on! That’s Rupert Loomis. Remember? Moo? The one who’s kind of like Mr. Collins Junior? I’ve told you about him a zillion times! The whole thing was a joke. I can explain.”