Eligible

With estimates in hand for both cleaning and yard services, Liz knocked on the door of her father’s study. When he called, “There’s no one home,” she pushed the door open.

Mr. Bennet’s desk, which he sat behind, faced into the room, so that Liz saw the back rather than the front of his computer. Aside from this computer, her father’s study looked as it had when his parents had sold the house to him in 1982 for the sum of one dollar, the same year they sold their summer home in Petoskey, Michigan, to his sister, Margo, for the same price. Indeed, it was quite possible that Mr. Bennet’s study, with its sleigh bed, brown velvet curtains, leather-topped writing desk (the leather was burnt red and had a border of gold-leaf embossing), and porcelain desk lamp with fringed shade, was unchanged since Liz’s grandparents had first moved into the Tudor in 1927.

In her youth, Liz had understood her father to be an important businessman, an investor—he had driven each morning to a two-room office on Hyde Park Square, where he’d employed a secretary named Mrs. Lupshaw—and it was only with the passage of time that Liz realized that the investments he oversaw were solely those belonging to his immediate family and that, further, their oversight accounted for the entirety of his job. This realization had been so gradual that it was not until her junior year of college, when a friend of Liz’s said of the wealthy older guy the friend was dating, “He pretends to work, but I think he’s one of those men who push around piles of his family’s money,” that Liz felt an unwelcome sense of recognition. A decade earlier, when her father had “retired,” Liz had wished she did not have the cruel thought From what?

Liz entered the study. “I’ve found people to clean up the house and the yard,” she said. She glanced at the reporter’s notebook in her hand. “I’m thinking I’ll have them both come every two weeks, though obviously you’ll need the yard people less after the summer. When Mrs. Bildeier dropped off banana bread, she gave me the name of the cleaning service she uses, and she said they’re great.”

Her father’s eyes were focused on the computer screen as he said, “Your mother cleans the house, and I mow the lawn.”

“In theory, maybe. But you still don’t have full mobility, and Mom is so focused on her Women’s League luncheon.” Following the removal of his cast the day before, Mr. Bennet’s right arm was pale, shrunken, scabby, and, even after a shower, not entirely free of the rotten odor Jane had predicted; when Liz had asked Dr. Facciano how long it would be before her father could drive, the doctor had said four to six weeks.

“Nor is Nancy Bildeier’s house an advertisement for anything,” Mr. Bennet said. “If she owns a piece of furniture not covered by dog hair, I’ve never noticed it.”

Liz hadn’t expected resistance. Uncertainly, she said, “What if I pay for the first visits?” At present, she had $13,000 in her savings account, an amount that reassured her in comparison to the nonexistent nest eggs of her sisters but that also appeared inexplicably low given that her annual income was $105,000, she had no dependents, and, apart from living in New York, she wasn’t profligate.

“That’s not a good use of your money,” Mr. Bennet said. “Nor of mine. The answer is no.”

“But don’t you think the house is kind of a mess? And the yard, too?”

Mr. Bennet sounded untroubled as he said, “Everything tends toward entropy, my dear. It’s the second law of thermodynamics.”

Chapter 22 (#ulink_58afb91a-e267-5e3c-8fb2-0a2995fae80b)

To Liz’s surprise, both Lydia and Kitty exclaimed with delight on hearing at dinner of Charlotte’s Charades invitation. “I hope you know I’ll kick your asses,” Lydia said, and Mary said, “By cheating, you mean?”

“What if we’re on the same team?” Liz asked. “Is your ass kicking restricted to your opponents or is it indiscriminate?”

“Do you ever pass up a chance to use a big word?” Lydia replied. “Or do you find that circumlocution always magnifies life’s conviviality?”

“That wasn’t bad,” Liz said. “Especially for someone who scored as low as you did on the verbal part of the SATs.”

“Stop quarreling, girls,” Mrs. Bennet said. “It’s unbecoming.”

“They’d never speak to one another otherwise,” Mr. Bennet said.

“Chip and I are going out Friday,” Jane said. “But if we weren’t, I’d love to come.”

“Charlotte’s inviting him, too,” Liz said, and Mrs. Bennet said, “I’m sure Chip would rather spend time alone with Jane. A new couple needs space.”

Lydia turned to her eldest sister, her voice merry. “Jane, do you think Chip will be the one you lose your virginity to?”

Mr. Bennet stood, dropping his napkin on the table. “As interesting as I find this conversation, an urgent matter has come up. I need a hamburger.”

Simultaneously, Liz said, “Dad, you can’t drive,” and Jane said, “Dad, you can’t eat red meat.”

Mr. Bennet gestured toward his plate, atop which sat moderate portions of lentil stew prepared by Jane and salad prepared by Liz. “This is unacceptable,” he said. “I’m not a small woodland creature. Lizzy, we’re going to Zip’s.”

“Dad, Dr. Morelock is the one who recommended a plant-based diet,” Jane said. “It wasn’t us.”

“The iron in a hamburger will help Dad,” Kitty said. “Just don’t eat the bun.”

“That’d be like watching a burlesque show with one’s eyes closed,” Mr. Bennet said.

“Yuck,” Mary said.

Mr. Bennet pointed toward the back door. “Hop to, Lizzy.”

Liz glanced at Jane, who sighed audibly. This Liz took as tacit permission, and she, too, stood; the truth, unfortunately, was that the lentils were almost flavorless. “Does anyone else want anything?” she asked.

Everyone did except for Jane—they requested hamburgers and cheeseburgers and french fries—though at the last minute, just before Mr. Bennet and Liz walked out the back door, Jane called after them, “Fine. I’ll take an order of onion rings.”

Chapter 23 (#ulink_a21a5ea2-76ae-5c4c-9528-6f559d30cb27)

“Are you still planning to stay in Cincy until September?” Jasper said to Liz over the phone. “Because I don’t know if I can wait that long for you to get back.”

“I was thinking we should meet somewhere for a weekend in August,” Liz said. “Maybe Cape Cod?”

“Here’s my question,” Jasper said. “I realize your mom’s shindig is the biggest thing ever to happen in her life. But when she claims to be spending her days on nonstop planning, what’s she literally doing? Isn’t the event at a hotel that’s making the food and taking care of the setup?”

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.”

Chapter 24 (#ulink_35f070ed-9712-5957-b661-20ffb66b7793)

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.