He looked me straight in the eyes for the first time. "Philippa Lockwood."

Not just a name but a whole world of obstacles.

"That explains a lot," I said. "Did you think I'd never find out?"

Willis breathed deeply and I sensed his relief. His arms reached for me, lighter, having shifted some of their heavy burden onto my shoulders. He pulled me onto his lap and when he kissed me, I felt not only his affection, but gratitude.

Fifteen

I set aside the lease I'd prepared for the next day's trip to the hospital as Omar walked into the office. "Go without me and save a seat," I said. "I'll be there in a minute."

"It's not just a lecture," Omar said of the evening's panel discussion, billed as "The Fanny Wars." "Sheila got a babysitter so she could go. And Magda will be there." Omar tapped his knuckles on my doorframe the way my boss once punctuated his gentle warnings. "You don't want to miss it."

"Save me a seat," I said. Even sequestered two floors above the Archie Wars, I grasped the dramatic possibilities of Archie, Sheila, and Magda in the same room. My Jane Austen was surely on-site already with an unobstructed view of the parties. All the same, once Omar left, I clicked on the e-mail I'd been ignoring for days, unwilling to sacrifice my happiness to the misery in Texas. But, now, one more hit could hardly matter. I clicked on Karen's message, "More Pictures." The page took forever to come up.

"Lily?"

Sheila Porter loomed in my doorway, a child in her arms and two more around her feet. She'd taken noticeable pains with her hair and makeup and I wanted to weep for her desperation. "Yes. Sheila. Hello," I said.

"Lily, I'm so sorry to bother you," she said, squinting from the pain of bothering me, "but could I leave the boys in here with you for just a bit?"

"Well, I—" I choked. "What happened to the babysitter?"

"She's delayed."

"How delayed?"

"Just a few minutes. I told her to fetch the children from you, here in the office."

"Well, it's all set then."

"If you don't mind." She squinted again and I didn't see any way out. "Thanks awfully, Lily." She closed the door.

The older boy grinned at me. One of the twins stood at the door crying and the other yanked an orange electrical cord as the e-mail radiated in my face. I grabbed the cord from the baby's hand and sat him in my lap as I read.


To: Lillian Berry [email protected]

Sent: July 3, 5:45 A.M.

From: Karen Adams [email protected]

Subject: More Pictures

Lily,

I don't hear from you very often so I imagine things must be going better. I thought I'd save bad news for your homecoming but so much has happened that I don't think it would be right not to tell you. Also, I'm worn out from dealing with it alone. It would really help me cope if we could talk.

I confronted Sue about the pictures she left out for me to find. She put one picture by the phone, one in the bathroom, and one on the mantel. The woman is twisted, Lily. She told me I had a problem. Me? When I spoke to Dad about it, he asked me to back off, that this had been hard on Sue as well as us. Can you believe it??!! I just want to scream. Anyway, I took the pictures to show Greg and to scan for you.

Do you think Mom knew? I can't believe she did. But the relationship has been going on for years. I just don't know what to think.

I'm still planning to attend the wedding, just to keep the lines open. Sue has a daughter who will be there. Not surprisingly, Sue and her daughter are estranged—information I got from Dad. So it will be a lovely event that I'm sure you're sorry to miss. Greg will be there to support me. He's been great.

I feel like we've lost both parents.

I miss you,

Karen


The baby slid off my lap and toddled over to his crying twin, tears mixing with mucus running from nose to mouth. I wanted to sit on the floor and cry with him. Older brother amused himself at Claire's desk, drawing on her blotter. "No," I said too emphatically, taking the pen away and setting him on the floor.

The e-mail had been sent a full week ago. I'd managed to ignore reality for an entire week, which meant the wedding was only days away. If I stopped now, ignored the pictures she'd added as attachments, I might recover with minimal damage. But I clicked on the first picture and waited. The shot Karen had described filled the screen: my dad kissing Sue at a New Year's Eve party. No mistaking the shirt, my Christmas present to him, dating the shot precisely. Her arms clasped behind his neck, his hands on her lower back, behaving badly while the cancer grew in my mother. The damage done, I began shivering from the inside out.

I clicked on the second picture, then rose to fetch Sheila's oldest boy from Nigel's desk. He pulled paper and notebooks from a bottom drawer. I relocated him to the front of the office where I could see him while the next picture filled my screen: Sue standing near a "Welcome to California" sign, like a thousand other vacation pictures in family scrapbooks. Posing in a sundress, Sue smiles suggestively at the photographer. One arm extends toward the little Karmann Ghia my father drove, the car my mother called his "mid-life crisis." He sold the car ten years ago.

The oldest boy had found a highlighter and drew long fluorescent lines on his brother's arms. "Oh no, you don't," I said, swiping the marker from his hand, ignoring his startled expression. Both boys cried.

Unable to stop with the pictures, I clicked on the last link. My head felt hot, my insides like lava as though I might vomit, while the oldest boy made noise at Claire's desk. The last picture was obviously older, the color faded. Sue's hair is darker and permed; her eyes still have the spark of youth I recognized in younger pictures of my mother. They are sitting at a restaurant table, his arm around her shoulders, her head leaning toward him, his mouth forming a word beneath his mustache. Sue had included this shot because of the mustache. My father had a mustache in his late forties. My father knew Sue at least twenty-five years ago.

The office door opened and I looked up at the babysitter. The twins were sitting on the floor crying. The oldest boy called, "Felicity!" from Claire's desk, where he rattled a box of breath mints in welcome. The babysitter ignored me, picking up a twin, staring strangely at the oldest boy. "What are you doing?" she asked him. She left the baby and grabbed the mints out of the oldest boy's hand.

"What happened?" I asked, turning my chair, still reeling from the emotional burden of an affair conducted over my entire lifetime.

"Sit still." Felicity spoke calmly, ignoring me.

"Iwanmymummy." The child began crying.

"He's pushed a mint up his nose," Felicity said, scowling. "At least one."

"No," I said, as if it couldn't have happened, as if I'd been paying attention.

"Be still," Felicity said. "I can't see it." She poked up his nose and the child screamed. "Oh shit," she said.

"How about if I ask him to blow his nose?" I said. I found a tissue and held it up to the child's face, demonstrating how to blow. Then I tried counting: "One, two, three, blow!"

"Mummeee," he cried, and I wanted to cry, too. Then a mint dropped on the floor. Mints were rolling all over the desk and it could have been one of those.

"Did that come from his nose?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

I didn't know how she could be sure.

"Mummeee," he wailed.

*   *   *

When I arrived at the Fanny Wars panel discussion, one of the men was citing Lionel Trilling's famous comment, "Nobody, I believe, has ever found it possible to like the heroine of Mansfield Park."

The audience laughed; a few clapped or made comments.

"With all due respect." A woman pointed her pen and took the microphone they passed among themselves. "I keep going back to John Wiltshire's essay suggesting Fanny is a radically traumatized personality, thanks largely to the abuse of Mrs. Norris and neglect of everyone except Edmund. Fanny turns inward, creates a life for herself from her reading, an intense inner world that cannot be reciprocated by those around her."

Someone else took the microphone and said, "Jane Austen's own mother thought Fanny insipid." The audience laughed. "But seriously," the new speaker continued, "I think Jane Austen messed up on this one."

Sheila was there for the discussion, sitting alone.

Sixteen

Having spent the drive to London imagining Philippa Lockwood, I now prepared to meet her in the flesh. Somewhere within the teeming warren of the hospital, Willis's beloved stood at her grandmother's bedside, dreaming of her happy future with Willis. She persisted in her mistake, oblivious to the fact he'd spent days in the attic with me, introduced me to the roof, and made love to me in the music room.

In the hospital, Vera approached the information desk while I watched people coming and going, any one of whom could be Philippa. I walked the brightly lit halls like a spy, studying the block and diamond pattern in the tile floor, breathing the mix of chemicals and sick body odors. Fortunately, I had no appetite to lose; I hadn't eaten much lately and my clothes felt loose. Vera looked nervous, too.

"Do you have the lease?" Vera asked.

"For the last time, yes." She'd asked every five minutes, as if she had no memory.