Disclaimer: I'm not even sure if I own this plot. Haha.
A/N: So here's the deal. I love Jane Austen, though I haven't read every single work of her's. After really needing a new story to stimulate my growing boredness, I decided...why not try and do a modern-retelling of a Jane Austen book? Since I haven't seen many on here, I decided to do Persuasion. Now, it's been a little while since I've actually read it, but I remember the story and the plot-line well. So I hope you enjoy this!
Bend And Not Break
A Modern-Retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion
I.
The Elliot Family had always been a part of the socially privileged. Or rather, in more elaborate terms, the socially blessed by God. Armed with a family legacy and a sprawling estate that would have made Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch look like a trailer park, the Elliots had only known the fortunate hand of luxury and extravagant riches. Walter Elliot possessed a horribly swollen ego, which often interfered with the outcome of his daughter's lives.
At an intimidating height of six feet, two inches, a thinning patch of steel-colored hair and penetrating, azure eyes, Walter's external appearance of coarse and rough rigidity was a sheer contradiction to his vivaciously nosey and bubbly demeanor. Walter lived on gossip and was the type of person that wouldn't dream of missing an episode of Access Hollywood.
If you suddenly demanded to know the exact details of Jennifer Aniston's messy divorce, Walter could spit out every useless fact, including the designer dress she wore to the court hearing. On the other hand, if you asked him the name of the current Secretary of State, the dizzy chap would only respond with haughty and stunned silence.
Walter had thrived in a world of imported wines and ridiculously overpriced, Egyptian bed sheets. He soared with stalwart pride whenever he mused about his VIP invitation to the Grammy's, or gazed fondly at his walk-in closet full of Armani suits and Michael Kors exclusive line of cashmere sweaters.
If thrust into the unimaginable life of the simple, working class, there was no question that he would experience more trauma than the time he couldn't find a date to P. Diddy's Black & White post-Oscar gala. Oh the horror! The agony! Walter's relentless sense of patriarchal hierarchy was an overbearing monster that had gripped Elizabeth and Anne by the hair.
It was safe to say that Elizabeth, the eldest of the two, did not feel the full disadvantage of such an unfortunate parental influence. Elizabeth was practically Walter's right hand, happily indulging in the lavish extravagances of such a lifestyle. She was quickly becoming notorious for her many famous connections, as she clawed her way to the top of the socialite ladder.
Fortunately, Elizabeth had been blessed with good looks, no doubt in relation to their late-mother, who had divorced Walter and run off with the Hispanic gardener named Carlos. Just like her father, Elizabeth was long and lanky, towering over Anne's petite frame at 5'7. Flaunting a head of golden locks, alluring hazel eyes and a natural glow, Beth Walter was the definition of a heart attack on legs. A recent graduate of Columbia University, her interpersonal interactions vastly outshone her academic abilities.
On the other hand, Anne Elliot was the black sheep of the family. Calm, mild-mannered and a deep adoration for the fine arts and intellectual endeavors, Anne was a quiet beauty. Small and fair-skinned, the youngest Elliot daughter usually pulled her thick, dark chocolate waves into a ponytail or messy bun.
She cared little for designer wardrobes and housed a budding diagnosis of wanderlust. Her overwhelming, nearly black eyes were often vivid with the concealed emotions that she so expertly shunned from her facial expressions.
The taste of gossip was sour in Anne's mouth and she had a short patience for the nonsense that her father and sister usually discussed. Anne favored Jane Austen or Lord Byron over In Touch Weekly and was in love with the mere idea of love.
With an almost child-like infatuation, she still favored the classic Disney tales of romance, honor and chivalry, secretly wishing that somewhere in the great beyond, her own soul mate was waiting for her. Her rational side mocked her triteness, but she just couldn't shake the fantasy. It seemed that true love had once struck, but her family's strong persuasions had forced her to believe that it was a sham.
Anne was forever reminded of her blunder and not a day passed when she didn't dwell upon a certain someone named Frederick Wentworth. They'd met at a random dorm party, during her senior year at NYU. Anne had downed one too many Long Island Ice Teas and so happened to collapse into the outstretched arms of Wentworth. It had been love at first spew-after Anne had apologized for vomiting all over Wentworth's dirty Chuck Taylor's, he'd kindly helped her clean up and then escorted her back to her dorm.
As fate would have it, they kept running into each other during the course of the school year and eventually plunged into a crazy yet genuine love affair that words could hardly explain. Anne had nearly fainted with pure delight-for once in her life, she'd found authentic happiness, a little niche of heaven.
Wentworth was as absolutely gorgeous as he was intelligent-tall with a well toned build, sharp, forest green, brooding eyes, an olive complexion and a shaggy, mocha mane, Anne often wondered why she'd been the lucky one to snag his heart. He screamed divine beauty, while Anne believed she whispered overrated simplicity.
It was no surprise that many of her fellow female peers were green with envy as they watched the relationship blossom between Wentworth and Anne. It was an unstoppable force that no one had predicted. Now twenty-six and a struggling journalist, Anne often escaped to the haven of her room, in the Elliot Manhattan brownstone to muse over love's labor lost.
Memories of the courtship between Wentworth and herself were branded upon her mind like a tattoo. She'd recall snippets of their conversation or snapshots of long walks through Central Park, as they playfully bantered about a various array of topics, from T.S. Elliot to the latest White Stripes CD.
However, Beth and Walter dismissed the positive aspects of the budding relationship, solely focused upon Wentworth's dismal financial state. Unlike the Elliot patronage, Wentworth was an orphan. Legally adopted at the tender age of three, Frederick Wentworth was a stranger to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, instilled with a work hard, play hard attitude.
Lorraine and Jake, Wentworth's adopted parents, held respectable positions, Lorraine as a local elementary school teacher in Staten Island, while Jake owned a small art gallery near 42nd Street. The Wentworth Household was not extremely rich or extremely poor and was considered, by all means, comfortably middle-class.
Frederick excelled in school, especially in science and math, graduating at the top of his high school class and later getting accepted into the prestigious Law program at Fordham University. Curiously enough, during his junior year, he discovered that his true calling was the theater. It started out as a lark-he'd willingly signed up for the Drama Club because a few friends recommended the experience.
However, Wentworth usually spent his time painting sets, rather than performing under the harsh lights of the stage. One afternoon, the lead for Hamlet had fallen victim to a bad case of pneumonia, thus sending the cast into a frenzy of hysterics. Wentworth had been the understudy, but didn't think he'd ever be called upon.
His belief was contradicted and three days later, he found himself flawlessly spitting out the troubled Prince's monologue about life and death. After relishing in the thunderous applause of the audience, Wentworth realized that the contagious acting bug was not a passing illness.
He soon juggled schoolwork and open-casting calls, recruiting a booking agent as soon as time and his wallet allowed. It was senior year that Wentworth got offered the part in the exclusive Woody Allen movie that would launch his career and it was senior year that he decided to drop out of school.
It was fairly easy to comprehend the total disgust and spite that the father and elder daughter generated towards Anne's object of affection. In her transfixed eyes, he was simply perfect. In their scornful eyes, he was perfectly poor. Like the days of the old English aristocracy, Walter and Beth Elliot considered themselves of the higher caste, turning their already pointed noses up at anyone below their standards.
Wentworth's first offense was the inevitable fact that he wasn't born into riches and the second offense was his disfavored career path. Perhaps if he had continued with his studies and become a successful lawyer, the father and daughter would have reconsidered their prejudiced notions.
As it was, Wentworth was deemed unworthy to even look at Anne and they frequently voiced their unwanted opinions about the lawyer in training turned thespian. Although Anne, in terms of her personal philosophies, was unconventional, she still held a fierce attachment to her family and valued their opinions, no matter how irrational they were. Anne constantly battled her emotions for Wentworth and the guilt she carried, rooted from her family's misguidance.
On top of this was the shrill discourse of a certain Ms. Russell, long-time family friend and pseudo Dear Abby to Walter. Once quite pretty in her youth, Ms. Russell lived alone with her twelve thoroughbred cats, in a handsome brownstone a few blocks from the Elliot estate. Her beady eyes were always mixed with affection and stern criticism, her self-righteous ethics acting as lethal propaganda.
With the abandonment of Mrs. Elliot, Ms. Russell had attempted to act as a surrogate mother, always offering her womanly "wisdom," whether or not Anne or Elizabeth asked. Somehow, knowing that this woman was her mother's best friend, created an obligation in the mind of Anne, to obey her.
Unlike Wentworth, who was violently independent, Anne could only blame her incipient innocence for the dreadful mistake she'd committed. Just before graduation, Wentworth had proposed under the twilight of Central Park.
Drowning in her parental ties and inner woes, Anne had remained stoic when she'd rejected him. Hurt beyond witness, Wentworth had heaved the Tiffany ring in the nearest trash can and stormed out of the park, ignoring Anne's wild pleas and shaky sobs. The next day, he'd whisked off to California, to begin shooting for his movie.
Anne had never spoken to him since, though she'd easily been able to keep track of his career. And now here she was, stuck in the same old place, life revolving around the same old parties with the same old, shallow fools, while Wentworth was traveling the world, capturing the hearts and minds of strangers alike, living and breathing the very excitement and vivacity that Anne longed for, something that could never be achieved no matter how many volumes of Whitman or Frost she idolized.
It was the bitter fact that he'd once loved her, only her, which stung the most. Now that Fred Wentworth was mingling with Hollywood's Best and Brightest, surely he would never feel the need to contact simpleton and stuck-up Anne Elliot, ever again.
Once a carefree twenty-something, Anne was veering towards latter adulthood with a pessimistic yet refined state of mind. Granted, a small piece of her still remained too trusting of her relative's opinions, but she was beginning to understand that persuasion, no matter the good intentions, could be a very dangerous and detrimental power.
It was the day that the Elliots were cleaning out their beloved brownstone, when Anne's entire world flipped-upside down. Due to Walter's endless love of non-stop partying, gambling and pricey trinkets, the Elliot family was forced to move into a more modest home, until they could gain the money to buy back their house. After failing to pay many fines due to bad checks and faulty credit-card bills, the IRS had finally seized the Elliot's 1.6 million dollar penthouse, in compensation for the owed money.
Ever the optimist, Walter was quickly able to find another apartment, although not on Park Ave. but still in Manhattan. Elizabeth had continuously complained about sharing a bathroom with Anne, but had quickly ceased her whining when she realized they were two blocks away from Burberry.
Anne was isolated in the depths of her old room, lazily and regrettably browsing through mountains of old photographs. Many were stuffed into envelopes, collecting dust in the scrapbook she'd long ago stuffed under her bed. Many were taken during the last two years of her days as an NYU alumnus.
However, there was one photograph that her fingers ceased to drop. It was a rather haphazard snapshot she'd taken of Wentworth, in her very room. He was sitting upright on the bed, his wonderful hair a rather wonderful mess, spilling over his chiseled cheekbones like extra limbs or ink blots on a luminous page.
He was gazing off at the traffic, his profile pensive and intense. But a small smile tugged at the corners of his lips, as though he knew a secret that not even Anne knew…a secret that was too good to keep smothered in darkness.
The only light had been provided by the camera flash and the intentional shadows outlined the underlying knowledgeable remorse of his youthful face, as though he knew their relationship was too pure too last….maybe they were doomed from the start. A train on the wrong set of tracks, without a purpose or direction, unable to halt because the break lines had been severely snipped by a chainsaw.
Yeah, maybe that was it. He'd been too perfect…too magnificent…too much of everything. Guys like that certainly didn't end up with girls like Anne Elliot, with half-mad Fathers that liked to dress the family dog in Prada baby booties, snobby sisters whose harsh mockeries could send Joan Rivers running with her tail between her legs and an estranged Mother that preferred to ditch the chaos for a Mexican gardener that barely spoke English. Ah yes, life was grand, wasn't it?
Anne was silently mourning the past, when Elizabeth waltzed in, her five inch BCBG platforms obnoxiously clattering on the polished hardwood boards. The room was essentially bare; all the furniture had already been taken out. The only things that occupied the space were Anne and a river of cardboard boxes, waiting to be filled.
The blonde-bombshell was dressed even for the grand occasion, showing off her newly tanned legs with an Anna Sui micro-mini and a cotton-candy pink, Dolce & Gabana tank top. Her makeup was expertly executed, highlighting her naturally pouty lips and long eyelashes. Her swan-like neck was drowning in David Yurman, gold necklaces, as if to contradict their black and white testament to a downward spiral of financial instability.
If Anne didn't know better, Beth appeared as though she were going to attend some edgy fashion show, rather than about to move out of their house. Elizabeth paraded around the room while Anne folded up the picture, and then gently tucked it into the back pocket of her Citizens of Humanity, five-pocket low risers. Maybe Wentworth had erased their torrid romance from his memory….but everything they had shared was too painfully real to ever block out from Anne's cluttered mementos.
"Well, you'll never believe what I just heard from Olivia!" her sister declared in a smug tone.
Anne resisted the urge to roll her eyes and sprung to her feet, warily studying the placid yet every alert Beth.
"What?"
"Fred Wentworth is shooting his new movie right here, in Manhattan! Can you believe it? I mean, what are the odds? Plus, Olivia heard from Gretchen, who heard from Wendy, who heard from that really cute waiter at the Tribecca, that he's staying at the Waldorf Astoria! That's right across the street from our new brownstone!"
Anne's eyes widened with unfiltered shock, months of cherished recollections smacking into her conscious like a neural-charged movie reel.
First, she recalled Wentworth's amused yet horrified expression as she introduced herself, then promptly shot out a handful of sirloin steak and alcohol all over his size eleven feet. Second, she mentally reenacted the moment when they'd first kissed, and she'd sworn she started to see sparks. And finally, Anne's line of vision detected the lemon-scented cleaning product, just before her waxen face connected to the unforgiving floor.