Volume 3: Healing
Chapter Twenty-Nine
"Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"
Lost my heart but what of it
He is cold, I agree
He can laugh but I love it
Although the laugh's on me
I'll sing to him
Each spring to him
And long for the day when I'll cling to him
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered, am I
May always meant Mother's Day. There was this tension, even the weekend before, as if Minerva Bennet thought there should be extra attention paid to her, as if her daughters ought not to even return to their homes or the dorm. But with only weeks before the Maker Faire, Tom was working hard on his little bugs for the Faire and needed attention and help.
Liz felt like she spent the whole weekend bouncing between her parents to make them happy. It did not help that as soon as Mary had bounced into the car one Friday, she had announced. "I'm really doing it. I'm moving to Boston with Bridget. I just need to figure out how to tell Mom and Dad."
"You are so going to put Mom over the top, there will be so much yelling that you can't do it while I'm there," had been Liz' reply.
"I need you as backup," Mary had pouted.
"No way," had been Liz' replied.
Mary was done with school by the time the Maker Faire rolled around, but Liz was embroiled in a mountain of end-of-school-year work. Some teachers parceled courses out and were kind. Anything before the midterm did not count and was not considered on the finals. Her participation and on-going writing counted for a large portion. But other professors were not so kind and things snowballed. There was an awful lot to do in those final weeks as she looked ahead to the end of May and the end of school. Liz wondered how it was going to play out for Jane in graduate school.
Of course Jane had not said no to Tom and was a dutiful daughter who would drive up to be a booth babe. Liz, at least, had been able to talk Jane out of having to help set up. Mary would drive over with their father while Liz would drive up the peninsula to the fairgrounds and help set-up their dad's little display.
He was highlighting something that came to light at night. Tom had finagled being in one of the large buildings on the fairgrounds, but he also had an easy-up tent with make-shift curtains on the sides (made of tarps) so that they could simulate complete darkness to show the power of his little solar-powered bugs.
The powering of the bugs had to be done artificially since they were indoors all day. They would shine powerful flashlights on the creatures to charge them, but the effect was rather beautiful. There were real potted plants in their tarp-covered booth with all of the little bugs on display. A sheer green curtain hung at the entrance which had been sewn with silk flowers to make it more inviting.
The curtain made a nice touch to the otherwise dark setup. Liz thought that their dad, in ensuring that the inside of the booth was dark, had not considered that the outside was unappealing. She was not sure that people walking by and seeing this tarp-covered booth would wish to step in and look. Not too many people are inclined to walk down dark alleys. She convinced her father to move one or two of the potted plants from inside to out in front so it gave it more appeal and welcomed passersby.
She and Mary looked at Mr. Bennet's rather small and homemade signs and shook their heads in unison. Tom had never been one for business, never been one with a sense of how to sell a product. He was always one for creativity, not one for selling, and had no sense as to how you got the word out about the reasons why what you were selling was so wonderful, and how you appealed to customers. Even the name was, to Liz, not catchy, 'Illuminated Insects' when she had suggested and had him reject 'Spotlight on Bugs.'
Tom Bennet walked out of his little tent and fussed with setting up a display of one of his butterfly prototypes in one of the green plants. Liz stood in a spot across the walkway where she had gone to look at the overall setup of Illuminated Insects, and considered her father.
She had argued over the years with both of her sisters about their father and his lack of business acumen, for not providing sufficiently for the family which meant that all three of them were largely having to put themselves through college. Liz thought of the cost of her own tuition and the amount that her sisters were paying.
She thought of innate abilities. Maybe Tom Bennet was not formed for business. He was not a social man that he could have partnered with someone to run a business should he have been clever and invented something sellable years ago. Not everyone is meant to be a millionaire. It hit her in a painful way that part of her had wished for a different father who could have done better at providing.
Part of her also realized that she had believed for many years that Tom Bennet had been lazy and had not worked hard enough. But Tomaso Bennet was not a lazy Italian and those cruel kids in high school were wrong. Life had not worked out for her father despite his working to the best of his abilities. Maybe her issue with rich men was simply that they were rich men. Some people work hard and made a lot of money (others did not work hard and still make millions). Her dad worked hard in his own way, but had not received recognition. Perhaps she needed to forgive her father.
Liz wondered about herself; looked at herself. Was there something, a longing which pulsed and ebbed inside that made her attracted to rich men, so she was in turn attractive to them? She started to think she must question everything she knew about herself. In some ways she still felt like she was lost, the woman majoring in English. What English major knows what she is going to do in life?
"Liz, come and help," called Mary who stuck her head out of the tent. Liz turned to go back and help.
The Maker Faire is madness, utter madness. It is so crowded that often times they need to turn people away at the gates. It is a showcase for people to do what its name says; it is a venue for people to show off what they have made. There are hand-made items, mechanical, recycled, metal, paper, glass, plastic and computerized inventions as well.
Liz was there at the front, doing her part. The Maker Faire was not necessarily about selling, though. It was not a fair where one buys and sells things so much as it was a place to highlight your talents and creativity, but with the idea that maybe somebody might be interested in buying your idea and help you market it, or if you had a website, they might go online, and buy whatever it was you were featuring.
Liz Bennet found she was the type of person who could talk to the people who walked by (mostly intent on some other destination). Why not consider a bug for your backyard that did not give you the willies, it was so colorful! She realized she had a natural talent to weave a tale about her dad's creations for the people who came by their setup to eye the metal bugs. Her father could only speak about them in more mechanical and practical terms. (There were some visitors who wanted to know how he wired them, connected the solar panels, or what sorts of light bulbs he used.) But she realized that first day the differences between her father's abilities and her own.
Liz spent a lot of time, when not talking to customers, thinking more about what she would do once she finished school. Rather than feeling dismayed about it, she was feeling empowered by it. (Despite her mother considering that she could only go into teaching with an English degree, poor pay and all.)
She considered what English had done for her. She read historical texts and modern texts. She read texts from different cultures which had been translated into English. She read texts from a multitude of points of view which gave her insights into people and culture and time and place and history. Liz thought she had developed quite a powerful view of the world and of people and that she could engineer that into working in a place like a law office.
She enjoyed the creative process, though she had found she liked writing short stories better than writing longer works, and was not sure that short stories were anything which would garner her any income. Everything on the internet was free so why should anyone pay her to write? But perhaps there were online publications that might hire her or pay her for her work. Maybe she could work for some news or human interest website.
She did not want to think about Fitz, but often, Liz could not help thinking about him. They had argued once, when she had accused him of being a businessman simply to make money, and he had rounded on her by suggesting he might be a microlender. Liz thought about working for a company like that: where she might be in a position to write grant proposals to ask for money.
She thought she might enjoy such work and be good at it. Liz could both write proposals, but she could also be someone who could ask for the money should she need to go, shake hands, and make a direct appeal for it. Maybe her appeal to those rich businessmen could be something she could shift to an advantage. Use it to solicit donations from those businessmen for a fund to help lift women out of extreme poverty when the wives of those businessmen could not lift themselves out of bed before eleven in the morning.
Mary was extremely helpful at the Faire booth. Liz knew it was because of her desire to move to Boston with Bridget. Mary had been cagey when asked about whether or not she had actually done the paperwork to transfer to this college all the way across the country and would not say, one way or the other, but she assured Liz that Bridget was going. Mary's extreme helpfulness with their father was a way of garnering his sympathy for her cause, and they both knew it.
Tom Bennet even seemed to notice. "Mary you seem particularly happy that school is out. Has college done you so much good that you are over being the gothy, gloomy teenager, and you are to join your older sisters in being a little more cheerful, a little more normal?" he asked.
Mary was a little startled. Liz noticed her reaction as though her sister knew she had overplayed her hand. But Mary nodded and went along with his suggestion, "I am happy to be done," she agreed then she threw on a frown, "I am still not quite sure what-the…" She then bit her tongue because for all that their parents were understanding, they did not put up with swearing, "I don't know what I'm going to do this summer since I haven't found a job yet."
Liz knew Mary had not looked too hard. She had been enjoying sleeping, and had said that she had been catching up on and relearning some music but not much else.
"Well, there is always the solar business. I could use your hands," said their father.
"Yeah, Dad, but you don't pay," said Mary. "You just assume I'll work for free." Something crossed her face as though Mary remembered she wished to remain on Tom's good side. To cover herself, Mary burst into a song and her dad shook his head and said, "one of your songs. Can't you sing like…I don't know… something I know?"
"The seventies were so weird," growled Mary who stopped singing to shake her head. "KISS? Really?"
"Okay, maybe I listened to them for a month," he confessed, "but there was hard rock too, the Stones had their heyday."
"Yeah, but disco?" argued Mary who forgot herself.
"There were some cool disco songs," he said. "It was nice dancing."
"Dad, it's just…I don't know how to tell you this," said Mary, "disco is just not soulful, no passion."
"I am not sure I want to consider my children talking about passion," he said, and turned to walk to the other side of the tent.
People seemed to come in waves to check out their little garden insect collection. They would come all in a bunch; and the Bennets would dutifully light up the butterflies, honey bees and fireflies. Then it was as though people were not brave enough to walk through the door, and they would only eye the setup with suspicion, and no one would cross the threshold. Then another wave of people would come in again.
Jane dutifully showed up, having left school quite early that morning. Tom thought she should just stand at the door being her pretty and welcoming self to direct people in, but all of the sisters objected to that. They protested that would be so unfair to trade simply on Jane's looks alone, and was not this the twenty-first century? Maybe Mary ought to sing if Jane was to stand there with her pretty face.
Mary added "I thought Liz was doing pretty good talking to people and conning them in like the proverbial spider conned the fly into the parlor," and they all laughed.
Fitzwilliam had talked about going to the Maker Faire once or twice with Charles about the idea of checking out all of the innovations which people showcased. He mentioned it when they got to the end of discussions about work and moved on to more easy conversations. Charles sounded very interested in going.
They talked about whether they should go officially, as if it were a company-sponsored visit, but there were last minute things to do Friday so the pair decided to go on Saturday and enjoy a more relaxed day. Somehow, Bob got wind of it, and Fitz was surprised that Bob wanted to come.
Fitz had swung by Bob's office to discuss some sales numbers, but was surprised when Bob expressed an interest in going. Fitz asked his cousin why he wanted to come.
Bob looked up with a wolfish grin, "booth babes."
"Pardon?" Fitz called out.
"I don't know if you've gone before?" asked Bob.
Fitz nodded, "yes."
"Haven't you ever been and seen the one or two wild inventors who have booth babes who dress in chain mail bikinis?"
Fitz pulled his head back to stare at his cousin, "I think I missed the women who wore chain-mail bikinis."
"I just really worry about you," said Bob, then his face sobered up. "You are still not going to tell me, are you? What went so wrong?"
"I told you, she disappeared. I don't know what went wrong."
"So you say, but it takes two to tango. Anything that goes wrong in a relationship—it is half her and half you," said Bob.
Fitz doubted that very much. He could not fathom that he had done anything wrong when it was Liz who disappeared. She had replied to his text that day telling him she did not want to see him again and refused any more communication. There had not been any real enlightenment, only confusion after that disastrous luncheon. He had realized he was on the rebound, at least, and was no longer attempting to find the ideal wife to ensure there was a next generation for Pemberley Energy. But he still thought it was Liz who had walked away and rejected him, thus her fault.
"There was nothing I did wrong," he asserted
Bob got up and shut the door. "Okay so you moped for a couple of weeks and then you have been a right royal son of a bitch. I still cannot believe you would listen to Aunt Kate. April was arrogant bastard month around here with that one battery guy, Carter, detailing all his conquests," said his cousin. "But you were quite the arrogant bastard too, I have to say. And I thought that was my job," he complained. "All you've said, whenever I asked, is 'she disappeared,' but considering how little I know about her, about the two of you in the first place, that does not tell me a lot," said Bob.
"That's the thing," said Fitzwilliam, "I didn't know that much about her myself and that was my undoing…okay maybe that was my mistake. She's probably one of those..social climbers like my PA, or like that awful one I dated a few years ago whose name I can't even remember."
"Tiffany?" suggested Bob.
"Something like that, another knee, name, Courtney? I can only assume Liz found better pickings like Collins even though she said they weren't dating, so she moved on. But it's not my fault!"
"So tell me again about how she disappeared?"
"I was going to take her to the trade show in Vegas and she didn't show."
"Trade Show, huh," said Bob. "That seems quite the leap for a relationship that was early stages, taking her to Vegas, were you thinking Vegas wedding? How long were you two…dating?" he sort of stumbled over his words. "It didn't seem like you were seeing each other very long and then you asked to take her away for the weekend?"
"You are questioning me taking a woman away for the weekend?" asked Fitz in confusion.
"Yes," said Bob. "I rarely, ever, do something like that. That's commitment-level sort of stuff."
"Commitment-level? But we barely ever saw each other," cried Fitz. "I saw her for minutes in the morning when she walked dogs and that was only on weekdays, and then we only had three dates, but otherwise, she would never make time for me, so I thought why not take her to Vegas?"
Bob shook his head. "I think you have your answer right there. You probably scared the living daylights out of her. Like you spent a total of, what? eight hours together then you're taking her to Vegas? My god! What the hell were you thinking? There are rules!"
"You and your damned rules," growled Fitzwilliam.
"Yeah, there are rules. You can have sex but you go home to your own place the first time. You don't spend the night. The second time, maybe then you spend the night. You work up to the whole going away for the weekend thing after you've been together for maybe a couple of months. It sounds like it was the third weekend and you know…"
"This is so not you," interrupted Fitz. "You're like, the bed them and leave them kind of guy."
"I can't believe you have known me all my life and don't get what is my persona and what is the real me?" Bob looked up. "I thought I told you before. I write love songs all the time; I am looking for love—just looking in the wrong places and not ever finding it," explained Bob.
"You can't possibly believe I was at all at fault," Fitz swung back to their original argument.
"You're male, I don't care," said his cousin. "She is going to blame you. Even if it was entirely her fault and it's some weird misunderstanding, it's your fault. Well, it's half your fault, but you cannot claim it was not your fault. That's the way it works in relationships."
Fitz started to open his mouth again, and Bob interrupted him, "okay, we're not going anywhere with this so we might as well drop it. And the plans are we're taking the train, right?"
"We'll take the train. Charles is excited to go."
"So am I," said Bob, "chain-mail bikinis."
"Surely they wear something underneath?" asserted Fitz.
"Well, they are making it a little more family-friendly, the Maker Faire these days, but...I've seen...nope, they do not," said Bob.
Fitzwilliam scrunched his face up, "wouldn't you get…things caught…I…never mind, I am not even going to go there."
"Okay," and they made plans to meet at the Atherton train station.
It was a little more of a hike from the train station to the fairgrounds than he anticipated, and Bob grumbled. He had not dressed to hike. "You are probably used to this…all that exercise…outdoors!" he quipped.
"I am back on the treadmill," asked Fitzwilliam, and he left it at that. They made it through the entrance gates with the entire crowd.
"This is all so fascinating. Who knew!" said Charles with his rather engaging accent, but it had a rather high-pitched flourish at the end.
Bob simply shook his head. "Okay, normally," he said, putting his hand on Bingley's shoulder. "Normally, the accent is really appealing and chicks love it. But the way you just said that, you are going to scare them right off. Quit acting like a five year old."
Charles laughed, "I didn't know we came here to pick up women. Is that one of the advantages too?"
Fitzwilliam shook his head, "this is business. Remember we're here to look at energy stuff."
"No we're not," said Bob. "Booth babes, chain-mail bikinis." Charles looked back at his friend Mason.
"No, energy," said Fitzwilliam.
"Booth babes." The two men argued playfully as they walked into the crowds.
Charles was like a little kid; there was so much to see, and he wanted to sample everything and please couldn't they do everything and go everywhere? There were things to see outside on the fairgrounds, though the crowds were incredibly dense. There was a walking machine, drones, mechanical and computerized vehicles, or creatures that moved.
All three of them liked the big dragon you could sit in, but who would not? If you were five or twenty-five or seventy-five, a metal, fire-breathing dragon you could ride in appealed to most people. There were some inventors who were hawker types and who were just sure they had a million-dollar invention. There were others who were shyer and humble, but still talented, and who wanted to showcase their little inventions. It was difficult not to stop at each booth.
At one point, the trio braved the food trucks to get something to eat, and Charles was floored that most everything was fried and massively caloric. He had this idea of California and health food which was belied by every sort of high-calorie food in fried form available before him, and practically not a green item on any menu.
But the buildings were also full of things on these aging fairgrounds; buildings no individual architect had planned to be cohesive and live together. They all appeared to have been constructed in a disjointed way; there was no sense of how you got from one building to another. The crowds definitely added to the confusion that the buildings did not belong together—everything was very organic.
There was a rather dark exhibit hall that they stumbled into almost because the crowds pulled them along and in through the doors. It contained various gadgets which lit up in different ways. There were light up clothes, signs, some solar designs to be sure, and Bob almost cried because someone had wired an old piano with lights. They made their way through it slowly, pushing against or with the crowds. At one point one of them suggested they all needed to grow beards in order to fit in as they appeared to be the only three clean-shaven men. People made things from soda pop bottles, from metal, from flexible tubing, or wood, and all with some sort of illumination.
They walked along one edge of the hall which did not have inventions of particular interest for any of them and where it seemed particularly dark. There was a flashing light blinking on and off overhead, almost like the strobe lights up in the sky at a Hollywood premiere, beckoning them to some booth, but they would flash on and off, then change patterns. The trio was not able to identify where they were coming from.
As they trailed along, merely attempting to move through the crowds, nothing caught their eye though Fitzwilliam noticed one particularly dark and ugly setup. He spared a thought for how uninviting it was. It seemed a cheap tent; rather than a table and an eager face out front willing to tell you about his or her invention, or some pretty face luring you in to tell you more (those booth babes Bob was so enamored of), this tent was dark and had been hung with blue and green tarps. There were a few potted plants in front, and it had a sort of light-up thing in front which had a weakening, dying light on it. It was not attractive.
Bob stopped walking. "Who is singing?"
Charles agreed, "yeah, I hear someone singing."
"I didn't notice," said Fitz, but he and Bingley had stopped as well. They could hear a voice, a little husky, but a song came at them, but also seemed to surround them so that they could not tell where it originated from.
"With my man,
He's not much for looks,
And no hero out of books,
Is my man."
Bob was mesmerized as he listened and it was like those searchlights which had been zipping overhead. They could not locate where the voice came to them in that crowd.
"It sounds like Holiday," said Bob. Fitzwilliam and Charles looked at him.
"What?" asked Charles
"Yeah, Billie Holiday, 'My Man.' Other people have sung it, but there's something about her voice which reminds me of Holiday's version."
"Who's Billie Holiday?" asked Charles.
"She's a jazz singer," said Fitzwilliam, who knew a little of Bob's interest and had been subjected to both clubs and recordings.
"Oh," said Charles. "I'm afraid I only really know pop songs."
"She probably died fifty years ago," explained his friend as they watched Bob stand fixated.
"All my life is just despair,
But I don't care ,
When he takes me in his arms."
"Yeah," said Bob, who was still frowning.
"Wow!" cried Charles.
"Huh?" said Fitzwilliam in confusion.
"Look," said Bingley, who motioned with his head. There was a blond woman coming their way with a cardboard food tray. She gingerly negotiated her way through the crowds of people with that tray held level before her.
"I don't know when I last saw anything more beautiful," said Charles.
"She's quite the looker," said Fitz.
Bob still had a frown on his face but he turned, "oh my god she's gorgeous. I suppose you have dibs on her now, Charles? Since you spotted her first?"
"Do you think she's one of these 'booth babes' that you talked about?" asked Charles.
They watched as she approached that dark tent and then stopped to nudge aside the curtain. "Mary? Are you singing? You shouldn't be singing," they heard the beauty call to someone inside. "Dad hates it when you sing." An indistinct voice answered.
"I think we need to check out that tent," said Bob, looking from the ugly tent back to Charles.
"I agree," said Bingley and their feet moved accordingly.
"You two," sighed Fitzwilliam. "I will wander around outside once you are done spelunking. Text me when you are done." Neither responded, Fitz was not sure if they heard.
A/N: late getting chapters 28 and 29 up but I have no qualms about it. No I wasn't evacuating because of the Northern California fires, but I went up to work a shift at an evacuation center as a volunteer. Some cleaning bathrooms, organizing, but a lot of listening to folks who have lost their homes, everything or are hoping they won't and are waiting to hear.
