“When was the picture of you and Mervetta taken?” Liz asked.
From the floor, Kitty said, “Her seventieth birthday.”
“Where was it?”
“Her son’s house. Bond Hill.”
“Did anyone else from our family go?”
“Dad.”
How rare it was, Liz thought, to be surprised in a good way by the members of her family.
“Did you and Dad go to Mervetta’s funeral?” Liz asked.
Kitty still hadn’t looked up. “Of course,” she said.
“THE LEAST HELEN Lucas could do,” Mrs. Bennet said as Liz descended the staircase in her running clothes, “is thank me for introducing my nephew to her daughter. I’ll tell you what—finding a man willing to date a young lady that size is no easy feat.”
Was it possible that in Mrs. Bennet’s mind two mutually exclusive narratives coexisted: the belief that Liz had made a dreadful error in spurning Willie and the belief that she, Mrs. Bennet, deserved credit for the match between Willie and Charlotte? It appeared so.
Liz had reached the front door and said, “I’m going for a run.”
“Did you send a message on the computer to Allen Bausch yet? He’d be so pleased to reconnect with Mary.”
“I don’t think Mary wants anything to do with him.”
“It’s worth a try. You just never know.”
“No,” Liz said. “That’s not true. Sometimes you do know.”
“THAT NIGHT WE met,” Darcy said, “at the Lucases’ house, when I told you the chair next to me was taken, Dr. Lucas had asked me to save a seat for him. He never sat in it, but I couldn’t have ignored the request of my host, who also happens to be one of the directors at a hospital where I see patients. I wasn’t being rude to you for the sake of being rude.”
“I hope that’s been weighing on you all summer.” Liz was naked, though only recently so, as was Darcy; he was lying on the bed on his back, his head elevated by two pillows, and she was sitting on him, her legs straddling his waist. Again, they had met by semi-coincidence rather than specific plan; they still hadn’t exchanged cellphone numbers or email addresses. “When I overheard you trashing me, my family, and Cincinnati,” Liz said, “was that also because you didn’t want to offend Dr. Lucas? I’m sure you must have been showing your good breeding somehow, because it couldn’t have been that you were just acting like an asshole.”
“Touché,” Darcy said. Both his hands rested on both her hips, and there was something ludicrous and suspenseful—pleasingly ludicrous and suspenseful—about having this conversation unclothed, prior to the main event.
She said, “Anything else you need to clear the air about?”
She’d been kidding, but his expression became serious. “Do you want children?”
“If you’re trying to convince me that we shouldn’t use a condom, the answer is absolutely not.”
He shook his head. “It isn’t that. It’s a sincere question.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want children.” The ambivalence she usually feigned during such conversations seemed in this instance unnecessary; she was not, after all, trying to endear herself to him. She said, “If you want, I’ll give you possible ways to respond and you can choose the one you like best. A) Oh, Liz, you’ll change your mind—you just haven’t met the right person.” Before continuing, she raised her eyebrows and tilted her head with fake earnestness. “B) But who will look after you when you’re old?” Switching to a scolding tone, she said, “C) Yeah, I bet you don’t want children, you selfish East Coast narcissist.” Pretending to be concerned, she said, “D) Wow, your childhood must have sucked. Or—” For the last one, she reverted to patronizing: “E) You just have no idea how rich and wonderful parenthood can be. In fact, you haven’t really lived until you’ve wrestled a shrieking four-year-old to the ground at Target. Now, keep in mind, Fitzwilliam Darcy, that you can choose all of the above.”
“That’s quite a list,” he said. “Though I think of you as more of a midwestern narcissist than an East Coast one.”
“Believe it or not, I do understand why people have kids. For most of my life, I assumed I’d be a mother, and I’m sure it is rewarding, when they’re not having tantrums. But the older I’ve gotten, the less I’ve wanted it for myself. Watching Jane go through her insemination process was the clincher. I like my life now, there’s stuff I want to do in the future that isn’t compatible with having kids, and it’s not even a big, tortured decision. It’s a relief.”
“What do you want to do that’s not compatible with motherhood?”
Liz shrugged. “Travel. Write a book. Run a marathon. Be a super-doting aunt, without having to deal with things like potty training.”
“I don’t want children, either.”
“Really?” She was genuinely surprised.
He smiled slightly. “Which reason do you think applies to me?”
“You’d know better than I would.”
“When I went into neurosurgery, I was making a choice that either I’d be the kind of person who lets his partner do ninety-five percent of the parenting or I wouldn’t be a parent, period. Anyone who claims that surgeons pull their weight in their own families is lying. The hours make it impossible, and for me, that’s before you factor in research. And, yes, I’ve heard the argument that not having children is selfish, but that’s ridiculous. If you really want to do something unselfish, adopt a seven-year-old black boy from foster care. I assume you’ll make fun of me for saying this, but I believe the skill set I have means I can contribute the most to society as a scientist and doctor. Any man with a viable sperm count can become a dad, whereas only some people can perform a decompressive craniectomy.”
“Why would I make fun of you for that?” Liz grinned. “I already knew you were an egomaniac.” The truth, however, was that he did not seem egomaniacal to her; he seemed principled and thoughtful, and she felt a vague embarrassment that she worked for a magazine that recommended anti-aging creams to women in their twenties and he helped people who’d experienced brain trauma. But surely this wasn’t the moment to turn obsequious.
Aside from disrobing, they hadn’t engaged in any additional preliminary activities. Nevertheless, a few minutes earlier, she had wondered if he had an erection, and she was now sure that he did. She rocked her hips forward once. “I think it’s time to get this party started,” she said, and she leaned down and kissed him on the lips.
SHANE HAD WARNED Liz that the inspection of the Tudor could take up to six hours, and it was after much deliberation and with much dread that, for the date on which it would occur, Liz had proposed to her parents a day trip to Berea, Kentucky. A town of fourteen thousand just under two hours from Cincinnati, Berea was known for a thriving artistic community that created and sold paintings, sculptures, jewelry, pottery, and weavings. For many reasons, a visit there seemed likely to be a terrible idea—Liz worried that its wares would be too homespun for her mother’s taste and that her mother would impulsively purchase, say, an enormous and expensive birdbath—but for the length of the inspection, the goal was to transport Mrs. Bennet out of Cincinnati and render her incapable of returning to the Tudor of her own accord.
When Liz broached the topic of Berea with her father, Mr. Bennet said, “I can scarcely imagine a less tempting invitation.”
“Right,” Liz said. “But your enjoyment is actually irrelevant.”
Mr. Bennet chuckled. “Tell me when we leave.”
Mrs. Bennet was only slightly more cooperative. “Deb Larsen commissioned a lady in Berea to make a hooked rug that looks like their house in Michigan,” she said. “The likeness is amazing.” But then a scowl came over her face. “Don’t think I don’t know exactly what you’re doing, Lizzy.”
Before departing, Liz emphasized to Kitty and Mary the importance of staying away from the Tudor until she told them that the inspection had concluded. “If you guys are still thinking of getting an apartment together, today would be a go
od time to look around,” Liz said, and Kitty said, “Maybe, but I’m going to a rowing class Ham teaches at eleven.”
Liz’s contingent used Mrs. Bennet’s car: Liz drove, her father rode in front, and her mother sat in back. It was a relief to Liz to take on the role of chauffeur, both because her parents were awful drivers and because Liz had always felt profoundly uncomfortable spending two-on-one time with them. So divided had their attention been for so many years that on the rare occasions when it wasn’t, something felt wrong; there was too much opportunity for scrutiny and uninterrupted conversation. In the interest of avoiding both, Liz had checked out of the Hyde Park Branch Library an audiobook she hoped would occupy the narrow overlap of her parents’ mutual interests—a nineteen-hour, thirteen-CD biography of a robber baron, published four years earlier and honored with many literary accolades.
The Bennets were approximately six minutes into the first CD when Mrs. Bennet began remarking on topics ranging from the temperature of the car (it was positively icy in the backseat) to the ongoing indignities of selling the Tudor (and besides, what guarantee did any of them have that Shane was trustworthy? Yes, he may have gone to Seven Hills, but there was something about him she didn’t care for. She couldn’t put her finger on what, but something) to the dullness of the audiobook (for heaven’s sake, did the author really expect people to keep track of all those names and who was related to whom and how?) to speculation about whether Ham would propose to Lydia by Christmas (Mrs. Bennet would have preferred Lydia’s husband to have a steadier source of income, God only knew if CrossFit was one of those fitness fads that would come and go, but he did seem to have enough of a head on his shoulders that if this business went under, he could find employment elsewhere).
An hour and fifteen minutes in, Mr. Bennet murmured to Liz, “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. When we get to Lexington, you’ll drop me off at the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky. You’ll pick me up three hours later. What you and your mother choose to do in the interregnum is up to you.”
Thus Liz and Mrs. Bennet ended up forgoing Berea for a leisurely lunch at a restaurant called Doodles, where Mrs. Bennet expanded upon several of the subjects she’d introduced in the car while also sharing, in depth, the progress of the item solicitation for the Women’s League auction. Though Mrs. Bennet conveyed her disappointment at not reaching Berea, her chagrin seemed expressed more than felt.
Liz’s phone pinged as she was standing outside the front of Doodles, waiting for her mother to use the restroom. Call me, read the text from Shane.
When she did so, he did not mince words. “Your parents have a spider infestation,” he said. “We need to get pest control to the house as soon as possible.”
Liz winced. “An infestation meaning, like…?” She trailed off. “Like, how is that quantified?”
“That’s what pest control will determine, but it doesn’t look good.”
“Are the buyers still interested?” Liz asked.
“No,” Shane said. “But that’s not our biggest problem now.”
OFTEN, ON THE last day or two before an issue of Mascara shipped to the printer, Liz found herself in extremely frequent contact with her editor: A sentence needed to be added to reflect that the actress Liz had profiled had just entered rehab, or that the member of the women’s national soccer team was now pregnant; the additional sentence meant that an equivalent number of words elsewhere in the article needed to be cut. Either in person in the offices of Mascara or by text, email, or phone, Liz and her editor would communicate constantly, in an increasingly exhausted and loopy shorthand. And though by the time the article closed, Liz felt utterly sick of whatever it was about—few readers, she believed, had any idea of the amount of work that went into the casual reading experience they enjoyed while riding the subway or taking a bath—when it was all finished, Liz rather missed her editor and their urgent and knowing exchanges.
Later, when Liz looked back on what she thought of as the Week of Fumigation, she felt a similar and perhaps even more surprising nostalgia for her frequent conversations with Ken Weinrich, the proprietor of Weinrich Pest Control & Extermination and the man who steadfastly guided her on a tour into the unsavory and bewildering world of spider infestation. They first spoke when she was still standing outside Doodles in Lexington, Kentucky, and it was the next morning when he parked his truck in the Bennets’ driveway. A sturdy, middle-aged white man, Ken Weinrich entered the house wearing a short-sleeved button-down tan shirt, jeans, and work boots and carrying a flashlight and a clipboard.
The intervening hours had represented, without question, the worst night’s sleep of Liz’s entire life, even counting elementary school slumber parties, college hookups, and overseas plane flights. For legal reasons pertaining to the former buyers’ retraction of their offer on the house, Liz hadn’t spoken directly to the person who’d conducted the Tudor’s inspection. However, the inspector had told Shane, and Shane had told Liz, that he’d found spiders on every floor, including inside fireplaces, ceiling light fixtures, and showerheads, and that they were most concentrated in the basement and attic. For this reason, Liz slept, or tried to sleep, in Lydia’s bed, but every few minutes she awakened convinced that she could feel the tickle of arachnid legs crawling across her skin. The inspector also had told Shane that the violin-shaped spots on the back of dead specimens indicated that the spiders were the brown recluse kind, whose bites were known to cause swelling, nausea, and flesh-eating ulcers. When Ken Weinrich confirmed the species, Liz’s first reaction was relief that Jane was gone from the Tudor.
There were probably, Ken Weinrich estimated, thousands of the spiders hiding in the Tudor, though true to their name, they were mostly reclusive. Not that reclusive, Liz thought as she recalled her various encounters with them during the past three months. In retrospect, the evidence was plentiful that calling an exterminator was something she ought to have done during her first week at home.
Assuming no rain, the fumigation was scheduled for two days hence and would require tarps to cover the house from the outside; once they were in place, sulfuryl fluoride gas would be released within them, and special fans would circulate the gas. The Bennets would need to be absent from the property for three days. Repeatedly, Ken Weinrich assured Liz that sulfuryl fluoride didn’t leave residue, and that not only the Bennets’ furniture but even their food would all be safe for future use. The cost of the fumigation was $10,000.
Mr. Bennet seemed resigned, while Mrs. Bennet met news of the infestation with indignance. Much the way they might have had Liz reported the sighting of a single mouse, neither of her parents appeared all that troubled. “I’m sure it’s not thousands of spiders,” Mrs. Bennet said. During the fumigation, they would stay at the country club.
Liz’s sisters, by contrast, were horrified, though in Lydia’s case the horror contained a rather gleeful undertone only partially compensated for by Ham’s immediate offer to let any Bennets bunk at his house in Mount Adams. However, that very day, Mary and Kitty found a two-bedroom apartment—just, as it happened, a few blocks from Darcy’s—and Liz was the one to pay the first month’s rent and cosign their lease. Not wishing to risk the transport of spiders into this new living space, Mary, Kitty, and Liz drove to the Ikea thirty minutes north of Cincinnati, where Liz bought each sister a bed and, to share, a couch, a kitchen table, and chairs.
She wasn’t ignorant of the advantages to her of underwriting their acquisitions: Now beholden, they’d have no choice but to obey the directives she laid out for after her departure from Cincinnati, among them instructions about monitoring their father’s diet; keeping the Tudor in a state appropriate to be visited by Shane, other real estate agents, and their clients; and making themselves available to their mother for miscellaneous errands in the forty-eight hours prior to the Women’s League luncheon. Though the luncheon itself was little more than two weeks away, Liz had decided not to remain in town for it. She just couldn’t stand Cincinnati anymore.
She didn’t want to spend another night in the now-spidery, soon-to-be-chemical-laden Tudor. She didn’t want to sleep for two weeks on Mary and Kitty’s couch. And although she appreciated the offer, she didn’t want to move in with Ham and Lydia and watch them kiss and coo and drink kale smoothies. With an abrupt urgency, she wanted to be home, in her home, which was Brooklyn. She wanted to get saag paneer and samosas delivered from her favorite Indian restaurant and eat them alone on her living room couch while reading a magazine, blasting her air conditioner, and not defending her lack of a husband.
“Do you think it’s awful if I go straight back to New York after I interview Kathy de Bourgh in Houston?” she asked Jane over the phone, and Jane said, “I’m not exactly in a position to tell you not to.”
Lying on Mary and Kitty’s new $500 couch, Liz couldn’t decide whether her behavior as a daughter and sister was exemplary or indefensible. On the one hand, she had in recent days exerted herself to an unprecedented degree to ensure the welfare of her family members. On the other, she would not be waiting even until the aeration stage of the fumigation was complete to leave. She’d be in New York in time for Labor Day weekend, and indeed, the main impetus for her flurry of activity was the knowledge of her departure.
THE WAY LIZ packed her suitcase and purse was to drive them empty in the trunk of her father’s Cadillac from the Tudor to the small lawn in front of her sisters’ new apartment; also in the trunk were full trash bags containing her clothes, toiletries, digital recorders, and laptop computer. She knelt in the grass and examined each article of clothing, each item from her Dopp kit, to ensure that no spider was clinging to it. She wondered if another resident of the building would complain—it probably looked like she was setting up for a garage sale—but no one did, and she found no spiders. When she’d finished, she carried her full bags into her sisters’ apartment, relieved that she would never be anyone’s mother and thus would never need to pick through the scalp of a child, searching in just this way for lice eggs.