Page 19 of Inventing Mr Darcy

Instead, after I introduce them to one another, laying a special stress on the youth minister part as a sort of warning, she smiles, nods towards his White Sox cap, and says, “Tell me you’re only wearing that because you lost a bet.” (She’s a Cubs fan, in case you couldn’t guess.)

His too-earnest answer? “Oh, I never gamble.”

I disguise my snicker as a cough and wait for Cassie’s withering retort.

“It’s so refreshing to meet a man who takes his position as a role model so seriously,” she says.

Of course, Bill doesn’t realize he’s being mocked. He can’t know that Cassie doesn’t even like kids, and it’s clear he’s not the type to recognize the signs of a woman whose patience in dealing with paternalism, sexism, and all the other isms is wafer-thin.

The three of us talk for maybe half an hour—or rather, Bill talks. About how his father was a practical man and wanted him to become an accountant instead. About the two-bedroom townhome he lives in, with rent paid by the congregation. About his vital role in shielding the youth of suburban St. Paul from fun trouble.

Cassie listens with apparent avidity.

I wait and wait for her to puncture his ballooning self-importance with one sharp barb. I mean, this is a woman who wears—wore—a WWJS bracelet (What Would Jane Say?) because she so admired Austen’s iconoclastic, biting wit.

The moment never comes.

Eventually, the cat who may or may not be called Tiger strolls by and allows Bill, a stranger, to scratch between his ears, and I’ve had all I can take. I slap the tops of my thighs, stand, and say, “would you look at the time”—the universal Midwestern signal to a guest who’s overstayed his welcome.

Fortunately, Bill takes the hint. He gets up, albeit with a greater show of reluctance than I would like, and reaches for my hand, clasping it between his soft, moist palms. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Elle. I’ll be sure to give your folks a good report”—based on what, I’m not sure, since I’ve hardly spoken two words. Cassie walks him to the door.

The moment it’s shut behind him, she turns to scold me. “Why were you so rude? He seems like a perfectly nice man.”

And maybe he is—but the Cassie I’ve known for years finds niceness deeply suspicious because it’s almost always fake.

As I toss myself into the chair he vacated, an awful thought flashes into my mind. “You don’t suppose that was my mom’s idea of a set-up, do you? You know she won’t be happy until she’s married me off.”

Once, that statement was something Cassie and I would have groaned at together. Two independent women, both pursuing advanced degrees, about to enter a job market so unpredictable we might end up almost anywhere in the country. Marriage can’t be our priority right now. Settling down is something other people do.

But Cassie’s expression is strange. “Well, maybe she’s got the right idea.”

As she passes by me on the way to her bedroom, I’m forced to reconsider the merits of my original premise: I’m in the middle of an alarmingly vivid hallucination. I’m bound to snap out of it soon.

I don’t find that explanation as satisfying as I once did, however.

Because now if it’s right, then my date with Fisher wouldn’t be real either.

EIGHT

By Friday, I’ve reached a point at which I can no longer deny my Austenless reality.

There’s too much evidence—or, more accurately, lack of evidence. No proof of life, so to speak. And the final nail is hammered into the coffin during Friday afternoon’s freshman seminar on the English novel. I slide into my usual seat and say to Camry, scrolling her phone next to me, “Hey, could I take a peek at your syllabus? I need to check something.”

I’m sure she thinks some due date has slipped my mind, but what I really want to see is the list of required books.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. OK, that’s a reasonable starting point for the course.

No Pride and Prejudice, but I was almost resigned to that. But hey, Frankenstein has taken its place, so that’s not all bad.

Then I look a little closer. Does that say “by P. Shelley”? As in Percy Shelley, the poet, the egomaniacal husband of the book’s actual author, Mary??

In this universe, he gets all the credit for her work???

I scan the rest of the list more quickly. Nope—not a single woman’s name. No Charlotte Brontë, who complained that Austen’s work lacked passion. No Virginia Woolf, who wrote so glowingly of Austen’s unmatched gift for prose.

No Henry James, either, which I can’t say I mind, because a) The Ambassadors is a snooze-fest and b) he was utterly condescending about Austen and here’s proof positive that without her influence, he couldn’t have written a publishable word.

In his place, we get Thomas “all women are temptresses who destroy men” Hardy and D. H. “I never had a conversation with a woman other than my mother, and that one went badly” Lawrence. And instead of a happy ending, we finish off the semester in the sexist, violent, dystopian world of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange.