Home, last December
“James sent a package here with a Christmas gift for you,” Charlotte’s mother said on the phone.
Lu and Beckett were gone to their father’s for the holiday, and the house felt cavernous and unpleasant. Charlotte was packing for North Carolina, where she would spend Christmas with Mom, as if she were a childless college student again. Was life moving backward?
“He knows it’s your first Christmas without him and the kids,” said Mom. “Isn’t he thoughtful?”
Charlotte considered other adjectives that might apply to James, but she had to agree: Sending a gift to her mother’s house was thoughtful. She felt guilty now she hadn’t sent him a thing.
“I’d rather not unwrap it in front of everyone,” said Charlotte. “Would you open it now and just tell me what it is?”
There was a sound of ripping paper and her mother mumbling to herself.
“Hm … it’s some kind of … oh! It’s a vibrator.”
The hairs on the back of Charlotte’s neck stood up.
“What?” she said, remarkably calm.
“It’s one of those vibrator things.”
Charlotte took two very deep breaths, then said through clenched teeth, “Mom, I’ll call you back later.”
She phoned James. “How dare you! How dare you mock me like that, and in front of my mom?”
“Charlotte, nice of you to call. How are things?”
“Please don’t insult me further by acting ignorant. I never thought … I didn’t think you were so beyond—I’m speechless.”
“You’re going to have to explain,” he said tiredly.
“The Christmas present, James. My mother opened it early and told me what it was.”
“You’re angry I got you a present. Duly noted. I try to be nice—”
“Don’t pull that crap.” Ooh, she’d never talked like this to him. She’d been conciliatory Charlotte, mending Charlotte, accommodating Charlotte. But it felt so good to fill up with righteous indignation! His “gift” had so crossed the line of politeness and trudged right on into vulgarity and maliciousness. Why hadn’t she confronted and accused him for the ever-so-slight infraction of adultery and breaking marriage vows? Well, he’d had the “love” defense then. How could Charlotte, nice Charlotte, fight back? She couldn’t blame him for not loving her anymore. She’d taken her part of the responsibility—she must have failed him somehow. A responsible adult takes responsibility even when it’s disagreeable, right?
But the vibrator? Oh, now things were black and white. Now James was truly, grotesquely Evil. She could tell him so, and it felt great!
“What?” he asked, all innocence. “I put a lot of thought into that gift. I know I’m not around anymore to do that for you, so I thought—”
Charlotte gasped so hard her throat hurt. “You’re serious? You weren’t just mocking me? That would have been bad enough, but you actually thought that was a legitimate gift? That I would use that thing and maybe … maybe think of you? And you sent it to my mom’s house, where I would open it in front of my parents! You disgusting—” Then followed a string of words that she would never speak in front of her children. They were neither original nor worth repeating, and she didn’t regret a one. Yet.
“Hey, take it easy!” said James. “Return the stupid massager, I don’t care.”
There was a pause.
“Mass … massager?”
“A neck massager. What’d you think it was?”
“Mom said … Mom said it was a, uh, a vibrator.”
“Oh. Oohh.”
“Those are …” Charlotte tried to swallow, but her mouth was suddenly dry. “Those are two words my mother would mix up.”
James snorted. “Yeah, she would.”
At that point, Old James and Old Charlotte would have laughed. The universe seemed to expect that laugh, had created a space for it, a pause to be filled. Nothing filled it. Charlotte rubbed her forehead.
“Sorry,” she said and hung up.
She pulled a pillow over her head and waited to die. When an hour passed and she still wasn’t dead, she got up and pruned the rosebushes.
Austenland, day 3, cont.
The gentlemen spread picnic blankets on the grass and servants appeared to serve a cold lunch among the scattered ruins. Charlotte kept looking at the rocks, expecting to see raw, white nun skeletons half-exposed in the dirt.
You’re not going to run into a nun skeleton after all these years, she assured herself.
It’s probably just a made-up story anyway, just like everything else around here, she reminded herself.
Then again, she told herself, unexplained deaths happen all the time. How can I say what’s really real?
Chills took fingernail-thin steps up and down her back, and she shivered and smiled. This wasn’t exactly the Austen-induced sensation she’d been hoping to re-create, but it was something, and she would enjoy it. At least, while it was still light out.
Mr. Mallery sat beside her and offered her punch in a crystal tumbler. She almost protested at his attention, but Eddie caught her eye and nodded, so she accepted the glass and sipped.
“Do you think Colonel Andrews is playing with us,” she asked, “or is the story true?”
“I make it a habit never to speculate about what goes on inside our colonel’s mind.”
“Such a peek might be enough to drive one mad?” she guessed.
“Perhaps,” he said.
“Or make one smile? In your case, that might be the same thing.”
He looked at her and did smile, and though it wasn’t very sincere, was even a little goofy, it helped.
Whew! She’d done it! Well, her comment wasn’t incredibly witty, but it was something. After all, Mr. Mallery wasn’t a blind date. Not really. He was an actor. She didn’t have to give herself a headache trying to figure out if her date was uninterested and so she should skip dessert, or if there would be an exchange of numbers, a walk to the door, a goodnight kiss, an expectation of an invitation in. No worrying here. Her obligations had been thoroughly outlined by Mrs. Wattlesbrook: be Mrs. Charlotte Cordial, live by the house rules, and at the end of two weeks, go home.
Still, her mind would rather solve a problem than contemplate the way Mr. Mallery was looking at her, so she said, “Colonel, will you read some of that little book now?”