September 1990, Buffalo, NY
Guess what? Liz doesn't have to be embarrassed by Mary or me anymore, because she's going to stay here at boarding school. In a seminary – isn't that romantic? Kind of like those rich young ladies in the old days, except the girls here are wearing Guess and Moschino instead of those big puffy dresses they used to have a hundred years ago. But she'll still be living in an old house full of girls, just like the illustrations in A Little Princess. Except Liz is more of a Lavinia than a Sara, I guess.
It takes two trips in our rented limo to fetch everything Liz brought from home to her new room. The twin room she's got is pretty good sized – almost as big as what she has at home – but she has to share it with a roommate, so we need to bring half of her clothes back with us. She nearly goes ballistic when she realizes this, and starts turning all her bags inside out, dumping clothing in a pile on the twin bed and pulling out a skirt here, a sweater there, posing in front of the mirror before she decides whether to put it in the closet or toss it in the pile on the floor. If she goes on like this, we'll be here forever.
"Elizabeth, honey," coaxes Grandma. "Here, I've opened your biggest suitcase on the floor so you can put all the clothes you don't want in there. We need to start making your bed, or there won't be time to get your room set up before we have to go."
"I hate this place!" Liz flips her hair and stomps her foot. "Why do you have to leave me out here in the boondocks where there's nowhere to go shopping and I have to share a room and a bathroom – that's so gross – and the bed's so small – can't you just bring me back home?"
"And have you go to public school? Young lady, your conduct here is hardly befitting of an Elliot." This is the first time I've ever seen Father getting mad with Liz; usually, she's the apple of his eye and can do no wrong. "You will not throw away all the advantages that we've given you. Don't you know you're going to one of the top prep schools for girls in this country? It's a chance for you to meet other girls from the best families in the East Coast. Elizabeth Elliot, you are going to stay here, and make connections that will benefit you for a lifetime, and there will be no more arguments about this."
Liz petulantly kicks the suitcase, before she starts pulling the clothes off the bed and stuffing them randomly into the drawers or the case. I start helping too, picking out the things I know are her favourites and putting them on hangers. Still, it takes ages to clear all her stuff before we can start getting her bed sheets on.
"Omigosh!" A voice squeals, and it's a girl around Liz's age with thick wavy brown hair, big eyes framed with lashes that have just got to be fake, and bright red lipstick. Her parents are following right behind, pulling two big suitcases. "So – we're gonna be roommates! SEM is just going to be the best – aren't you looking forward to meeting all the prep school boys? The sophomores and juniors, of course, freshmen are just babies. By the way - I'm Mariah. Mariah Crawford. And you are?"
"You mean – your name is Mariah, like Mariah Carey? That's such a cool name! I'm Elizabeth Elliot. You can call me Liz." Out of nowhere, Liz's pout turns into a smile, and she turns on the charm like a faucet. "It's so nice to meet you! Say, d'you think they'll bring us shopping in NYC sometime?"
Mariah shrugs. "I dunno about NYC, but anyways. There's a lot of fun stuff you can do here without parents! Hey - are those sunglasses Gucci, or Chanel? Can I try them on?"
And from there, they're thick as thieves, going through all their clothes and planning what they'll borrow from each other. I wonder if Father and Grandma can take me to the Niagara Falls, now that Liz probably can't wait to get rid of us. And I'm not surprised if deep down inside she always did, 'cause we've got so many people at home watching over us – Grandma and our au pair and Mary's nanny and our two maids and chauffeur – so sometimes, I wish I could have a space to just be myself too. Well, in two years I'll be coming here; I just hope my roommate won't be a carbon copy of Liz and Mariah Crawford is all. Please, just let me have someone like me to room with when I get here, and I'll be happy for life.
Of course, there isn't time to visit the Niagara Falls after we're done dropping off Liz, but Grandma asks if I want to trade rooms with Liz after we get home.
"Anne, you're growing up, hon," she says. "Soon, you'll be a teenager; time flies, doesn't it? Now that Elizabeth isn't going to be at home most of the time, maybe you could move to her room, and she could use yours when she's back for vacation. If you take Elizabeth's room, you'll have a bigger bed and more stylish décor. And I trust you to use the TV and LD player wisely and responsibly."
"Thanks, Grandma, but no thanks. I love my room, and she'll probably want hers when she's back too." It isn't hard for me to make the decision; how could I possibly part with the blue sky and white clouds Mom painted specially for me? Liz's room doesn't have a sky, only purple walls, 'cause even at age three she was a teenager already. I love everything about my room, and I'll tell you all about it right now.
Well, my very favourite part of my room after the blue sky is my bookshelf, with a giant lilac purple armchair next to it, where I sit and read for hours and hours. These days, I'm not into kiddie books anymore; I got through the Sweet Valley High series and Are You There God, It's Me Margaret last year in sixth grade, and this year I'll try Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Grandma says Pride and Prejudice is the book every girl has to read, 'cause Mr. Darcy is the perfect gentleman. But I don't know if I want to think about gentlemen, when all I want is for the cool girls in my class to ask me along when they have parties or go to the movies or for Earthquakes at Swensen's. It'd be fun, to go somewhere with just a bunch of other girls and not have grown-ups poking around all the time.
Then there's my bed, which I picked out from one of Grandma's magazines when I was five. It's a shiny brass four-poster, with rainbow-colored curtains you can see right through, and candy-coloured stripes on the bedspread and bed ruffle. I never thought about wanting to be a princess, but I always wanted my room to look like fairyland. The walls are cotton-candy pink, of course, with white polka dots. And there's a shaggy white rug on the floor, so warm and cosy to burrow my toes into.
Of course, if Liz talked about her room she'd go on and on about where she stores her clothes. I have a big dresser painted all in white with brass handles on the six deep drawers and a curly wood frame around the mirror and a built-in wardrobe with flat white doors, which isn't a walk-in like Liz's but then, I don't need all that space when I never did any pageants. Liz goes for labels in clothing, but I go for colours. Where she has Guess, Moschino, Versace and Calvin Klein in her wardrobe, I have Esprit, Benetton and Cacharel.
Last of all, there's the desk where I do my homework, a little vintage one painted white, with curved legs and little cubbies for my stationery. Just like all the other girls at school, I love coloured jelly-ink pens, but no matter how I try, my handwriting is neat but not cute and artistic like theirs. Back when I was in the Lower School, the cubbies used to have all my character erasers too – Hello Kitty and My Melody and Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Brite – but I've hidden all of them in a box now, though I've still kept them. I just like to keep old stuff like that, to remember with. It's a nice little corner for studying I guess, but I prefer to lie on my bed with my books, either leaning back against my mountain of pillows, or sprawling flat on my stomach with an open book in front of me, with all the curtains pulled shut. That way, it's just me and my own world, all the way from the end of school till dinnertime.
Fall 1990
I'm done reading Pride and Prejudice now, and some of the girls in my seventh-grade class have read it too. Just about everybody loves Mr. Darcy, or maybe I should say, everybody loves rich, tall and handsome men – one of the good things about having an au pair is they take you to all the cool movies, so even though the popular girls don't ask me along, I've still seen all the shows they've seen anyway. We've watched Ghost, and Pretty Woman, and Days of Thunder, and we'll be going to see Dances with Wolves next. Mary comes with us, even though she's only eight and in third grade, and even she knows how to stop whining when there's handsome film stars to look at.
And I don't know if it's because everybody loves Mr. Darcy or if I really like him, but pretty soon I start thinking he's the perfect gentleman too. Not during the times when he's acting hoity-toity, but during the time when he saw Elizabeth at Pemberley and he learned to smile for her sake. And the time when he went and made Wickham do the right thing for Lydia, even when he didn't know if Elizabeth would like him back for it! That was the one that took the cake for me. If only there was a man – tall and young and handsome and smart and serious – and I could actually see him, touch him and talk to him – I know I could never be his girlfriend, because he'd go for girls like Liz, but maybe, just maybe, I could be somebody like Georgiana. Yes – that's it, I wish I had a big brother like Mr. Darcy to keep me company and listen to me telling him all kinds of funny stories, and who would stand up for me and protect me.
But I know the other girls don't dream about being Mr. Darcy's Georgiana, they all want to be Elizabeth, and why won't they? It's interesting that most of them probably look like Caroline Bingley instead, though they say they want to be Elizabeth and Jane. 'Cause I bet if Elizabeth Bennet was twelve years old in 1990, she wouldn't be wearing push-up bras, halter neck tops and skin-tight Guess jeans. Then, what would she wear? Short sleeved, fluttery summer dresses? Levi's with one of those oversize long-sleeved paisley shirts like the one from Guess that Liz handed down to me? Turtleneck sweaters with tights and plaid miniskirts? I have absolutely no idea, 'cause I know nobody, not even me, thinks I could be an Elizabeth Bennet in any way. Back to the point – I might not think I can attract a man like Mr. Darcy, but everybody else in my class wants to. Or not specifically Mr. Darcy – but any handsome man no matter what the colour of his hair might be. Now that everybody watched Ghost last summer, the class joke, at least for the popular girls, is to sing Unchained Melody, only you can't just sing it, you have to wail it at the top of your voice drawing out all the words as long as you can. Like this:
"Oh, my-y-y lo-ove, my da-ar-li-ing, I've hun-gered for your-or-or tou-uch! A long, lone-ly time…"
Yuck. Just, yuck. But that's what all the popular girls are doing, and if it isn't that song, the other one is Extreme's More Than Words, because there's girls in my class who think Nuno Bettencourt is, in their words, "yummy". They'll shriek "Nu-no! Nu-no!" and they'll croon that song, all the way to the "La di da di da, di da di da, more tha-an words" in voices as syrupy as treacle. All of it just gives me goosebumps, so maybe that's why they never invited me to join them. And I can't really explain why I still want them to invite me anyway.
Fall 1991
When I ask Grandma to get me War and Peace, she wonders whether I've gone off my rocker.
"Anne, that's probably the thickest book there ever was, and it's hard even for college students. We all know you're smart without you having to go all out to prove it, so surely there are other things you want to read that won't be so hard on you?"
"Grandma, I'm not reading it to prove anything," I protest. "I just read this little bit from it in my book about nursing stories, where the prince is injured and he meets Natasha again, and I want to see if they'll get together. I want to know their story before and after he gets hurt and find out about their ending. Please, can I read their story?" What I don't say, is that I've read Pride and Prejudice about twenty times already and I want more stories about tall handsome men like Mr. Darcy. And so, the only reason why I want War and Peace is to read a romantic story about a tall, handsome prince and the girl he loves.
"Well, dear, just be prepared," replies Grandma. "When you start getting into adult books, not every story is going to have a happy ending. Because life is always happy when you're a child, but when you grow up, you'll find that the world has a lot of sadness too. I don't know if you're ready for that yet, but please don't be too disappointed if you find it's sadder than you expected."
"Does that mean they don't have a happy ending?" I ask.
"She does," is Grandma's cryptic reply.
The idea of being Natasha turns out to be even more untouchable to me than being Elizabeth Bennet. At least, Elizabeth is twenty, and it'll be forever before I get to that age; but I'm already thirteen, and Natasha turns thirteen at the beginning of the book. She is a graceful girl with skinny arms who likes to dance, and I think I know exactly how she looks already, because we just had auditions for a dance extravaganza performance and that's what all the girls who got in look like. It'll be a medley of different types of dances – ballet and tap and jazz – and I was really dying to get in, but I'm short, stubby and clumsy so of course I didn't make the cut. And so, there is absolutely no way I could be Natasha and have a prince fall in love with me.
Practices are on Wednesdays, and there are only one or two other girls other than me heading straight home after class. The dance show doesn't have many boys in it, so when I walk out to the car, Charles Musgrove is also there, getting into his mom's Toyota Camry.
"Hey, Anne," he calls out. "Want to come over to my house instead? I could show you the new car we have at the garage, and we could play Super Mario for a bit, if you'd like. Just tell your chauffeur to go straight home, we'll give you a ride back to your house after."
Charles and I used to hang out at his home two days a week after school when we were in the Lower School, but once we got to sixth grade, it just got weird for boys and girls to hang out together. That's when it became cool for boys to just hang out with boys and groups of girls to go out together, and if anyone ever crossed that divide, it meant you were dating. Charles and me, we were friends – but mostly, I loved to be at his house because I wished I had a mom like his mom. All these years, she's changed her car many times, but every single one of them had the same bumper sticker, saying "Mom-Mobile" on it. She was always making something delicious in the kitchen, and unlike at my home, she'd actually let me help her out. Of course, Grandma never goes into the kitchen either – that's why we have two maids at home. And we're not allowed to do anything that might mess up our clothes. But Charles let me change into his old play clothes whenever I hung out with him after school at his home and his parents' repair garage, so I could get messy with cookie batter and car grease, and Father and Grandma didn't have to be any the wiser.
I must be sending out obvious low vibes on Wednesday afternoons, because Charles decides he'll have me over whenever there's dance practice, and we fix it up that I go home with him and his mom instead of my chauffeur those days. Mostly, we hang out doing stuff he likes – playing Super Mario and Pac-Man on his Nintendo, having his dad point out stuff to us that he's doing to the cars in the repair garage, and watching Coach and its reruns. I try suggesting we watch Full House instead, but he isn't interested so if I get tired of doing boy stuff, I just hang around with his mom in the kitchen. All of this still beats flopping around in my room thinking about the dance show, so I don't mind; and it does make me feel a little better about not getting into the dance thing.
When the rest of our class catches on that we're hanging out after school, they start making twittering noises and calling us "the lovebirds", and they sing Unchained Melody at us when we head to Mrs. Musgrove's car together after class ends. Charles and I know we're not really dating, though; and he doesn't know how to be mortified when he's always been both chubby and runty at the same time, so everybody liked to make fun of him right from the first day of Pre-K. I try to avoid it all by bringing a book to school so I can sit alone during recess, and also pretend to be reading at pick-up time till his mom pulls up and I make a mad dash into her car. When we're together on our own, without the rest of the kids in our class watching, it's like old times again, which means it's easy to talk and do stuff together though I don't feel all that excited about hanging out with him. And I wonder, is this what it means to have a boyfriend and get married? It's easy, it's comfortable, but it isn't exciting at all.
I get done with War and Peace in record time because I'm reading it all the time before class, during recess, while waiting for Charles' mom, and in my room after school. Of course, I'm not really reading everything, only skipping to the parts that have Prince Andrei and Natasha in them. And I love them together almost more than I love Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. At least, that's the case till I get to the part where he dies; and then I don't want to read any more. Grandma has the video tape of the old movie with Audrey Hepburn and Mel Farrer, and when I tell her I'm sad because Natasha and the Prince don't have a happy ending, we watch it together and I see that Natasha marries Pierre in the end. Henry Fonda is Pierre in the movie, and he's really good-looking even if he is a little nerdy; but in the book, Pierre is supposed to be this big fat clumsy guy. So, I wonder if this is how all the adult books end, that princesses don't find their Prince Charming, and whatever Charles and I are, even though I don't think we really are boyfriend and girlfriend, is as good as it'll ever get.
And then this year, we have Mrs. Frances Beale for English. She's notorious for match-making her eighth graders through literature; in spring semester of eighth grade, she makes every class read Romeo and Juliet, and her excuse is that we'll have to learn Shakespeare when we rise into the Upper School, so she's getting us ready in advance. But we all know she's actually having a ton of fun matching the boys and girls to read the parts. And then, she always makes her eighth graders do the play at the end of the school year, and the biggest highlight for her is picking the Romeo and Juliet who'll perform in front of all our parents.
It's Cheyenne Lucas who ends up doing me in; she's the track and field star in our grade and wears her hair cropped and spiky with bright golden highlights, and whenever it's warm enough to go without a sweater, she'll show off her tanned shoulders in her cross-back athletic tops. Everybody trusts her because she always says it like it is and comes straight to the point, so she's always been the unofficial leader of our class. And she likes it too – she's the one who collects everyone's addresses, phone numbers and birthdays, and makes sure everyone gets a class birthday card and a class Valentine every single year.
"Mrs. Beale, I think Anne Elliot should be our Juliet this year," she says. "Reason number one: she's the next one of us to turn fourteen, so she's the closest to Juliet, age-wise. Reason number two: she's got a nanny who drops her off and picks her up at school, just like Juliet has a nurse. And reason number three: she's got her own Romeo already – we all know she and Charles Musgrove have been sweet on each other ever since we were all in preschool. You like us to read our lines with feeling, and since she knows what it's like, she'll do the best job of all of us."
Great. Wonderful. With Mrs. Beale enthusiastically nodding and agreeing, there's no time for me to think of anything to say, and no polite way for me to back out of it either. Charles shrinks visibly in his seat when she looks at him, and after a long pause where she scans the entire classroom up and down a few times, she finally declares, "Thank you for your great suggestion, Cheyenne. I have absolutely no doubt Anne Elliot would be perfect as Juliet, but perhaps she needs another Romeo. And so, our Romeo shall be… drum roll, please… John Willoughby!"
I should've known Mrs. Beale always goes for looks – John Willoughby's the boy who looks the most like Romeo with his tumble-head of chocolate-brown curls, but otherwise, he's probably the ickiest boy in our class. He's kissed half the sixth-grade girls already and gives every girl in our class a single red rose for Valentine's every year. I don't have to worry about John becoming my Romeo for real when he never dates any girls in the same grade as us, and after the practice sessions for our dialogues, which conveniently happen at the same time when most of the other girls in our grade are practicing dance, his girlfriend Marianne, who's in seventh grade, will always be already there waiting for him, and they'll disappear off together right after we wrap up.
Having to act Romeo and Juliet with John Willoughby gets me thinking about Mr. Darcy and Prince Andrei all over again. If I close my eyes and count to five before I say my lines, and pretend I'm saying them to Mr. Darcy or Prince Andrei and not to John, and think about channelling Unchained Melody the way the girls sang it all year last year –
"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father, and refuse thy name.
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet"
In my head, I'm not Juliet when I say the lines, and I'm not speaking to Romeo either. Neither am I speaking to John Willoughby, and for all I know he might as well not be there at all. Instead, I'm finally Elizabeth Bennet at last, and she's accepting Mr. Darcy's second proposal.
"PERFECT!" Mrs. Beale squeals, her screechy voice interrupting all our flow. "AMAZING! That was the way to do it – if you just keep it up and do it like that every time, there'll never be a single man in want of a wife again. Now, let's take it again – all the way from the top."
In the same way Charles and I brought the house down by playing Fievel and Tanya when we were in the Lower School, John and I bring the house down by playing Romeo and Juliet, now that we're finishing up with Middle School. My costume, an empire-waist dress in burgundy velvet trimmed with gold braid, is just as beautiful as any of Liz's pageant dresses, and Grandma tells me we got another standing ovation. What nobody knows is that to get to where we were that night, John and I spent hours upon hours acting at each other; we walked into practice, said our lines, and then went our separate ways, him going off arm-in-arm with Marianne, and me walking alone to my chauffeur's waiting car. I don't know whether he was saying his lines to Marianne, or if it was natural for him to talk like Romeo to every girl in our school; just as he had no reason to know that I was saying all of mine to an imaginary Mr. Darcy. Yet, somehow or other, we managed to convince all the parents that we were the perfect Romeo and Juliet. Isn't that funny?
It's summer now, and there's a couple weeks after school's out before I go to camp in the Adirondacks. That was Father's idea: he said I needed to get used to living away from home now that I'll be joining Liz at SEM in the fall. While our au pair packs my trunks, I bring out Pride and Prejudice to read again one last time, because after the whole Romeo and Juliet thing, I'm totally fed up with all the sad love stories, and I just want Mr. Darcy all over again.
After so many months of pretending to say my lines to Mr. Darcy, I've got to put a face to him; over the last two years, I've been putting up movie posters on all the walls in my room, covering the pink-and-white polka-dot wallpaper with the clashing colours of Top Gun and My Own Private Idaho and Far and Away and Father of the Bride. Because Tom Cruise is dark-haired and handsome, he's mostly the Mr. Darcy of my imagination; even though he's only around five foot seven or so, I'm five foot two on a good day (meaning, when I've snuck out in my mom's old kitten heels) and therefore, that's plenty for me. And lately, I've been thinking that Frankie Valli's profile on the album cover of Closeup could be a Darcy too; I have the album with me, looking at his picture as I thumb through the book one more time.
"Anne! Yoo – hoo!" It's Liz, home from SEM for the summer. "Grandma wants to play Mom's old records, have you seen Closeup around the house anytime lately?"
"Coming!" I burst out of my room, and run out to the upstairs family room with Closeup in one hand, and Pride and Prejudice in the other. "Grandma, sorry I borrowed it for a little while. Here you go."
It doesn't occur to me to hide Pride and Prejudice, and Liz catches on in an instant. "Waitaminit. Are you thinking – don't tell me, did you think Frankie Valli is Mr. D-Darcy? That's hilarious!" She cracks up and doubles over with hysterical laughter.
"Why? What's so funny?" I know Liz knows way more than I do about men, but Frankie Valli fits the bill, right? Dark hair. Handsome. Romantic. And nobody cares if he's tall or not, if all you can see in that picture is his face.
"Well, I guess you're only fourteen, so maybe you can't tell the difference." Liz dabs at her eyes with a Kleenex as she gets her laughter under control again and starts to explain, a world-weary tone creeping into her voice. "Frankie Valli is an Italian. He's a Latin lover. Not an Englishman with a stiff upper lip."
We stare at each other for a while – Liz and Grandma and me – and then we all practically fall over each other laughing at the same time, but maybe all at different things. Liz probably still thinks it's funny about Frankie Valli being Mr. Darcy, and I think it's funny that Liz is talking about Latin lovers. And who knows what Grandma is thinking about all of this?
When we finally stop laughing, gathered as we are around Grandma's old record player, she smiles at us kindly. "Well, I guess the next time we go to Blockbuster, I'll have to see if they have Pride and Prejudice for rent. They made a movie about it, you know, with Laurence Olivier. Then, you'll know what Mr. Darcy looks like."