Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
“Wow,” Liz said.
Jane wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and Liz stood to pluck a tissue from a box on the nearby counter. “At least I wasn’t just stabbed,” Jane said. “It could be worse.”
“True,” Liz said. “But you’re still allowed to be upset.”
“It was so strange at the restaurant, Lizzy. I thought—I never think this—I thought, ‘Maybe instead of sushi, I’ll order teriyaki.’ Raw fish seemed disgusting. But Caroline suggested splitting a few rolls, and I said okay. When the food came, I looked at it and just the smell—I was sure I would throw up. Instead, the next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor with a bunch of waiters staring at me.”
After procuring the tissue, Liz had perched at the foot of Jane’s bed. “So—” Liz hesitated. “Do you want to be pregnant?”
“I did.” Jane’s voice quavered. “Before meeting Chip, I wanted it a lot.”
INCLUDING THE TIME since Jane’s most recent period, the technician who completed the ultrasound placed the pregnancy at between nine and ten weeks; because Jane knew to the hour when the final round of insemination she’d undergone prior to leaving New York had occurred, she could confirm the estimate. “So a late February due date,” Liz said. “A snow baby.”
She didn’t mention Chip’s name, and neither did Jane. Notably, Chip hadn’t reappeared in Jane’s hospital room during Liz’s time there, nor had Caroline or Darcy; Liz had no recollection of bidding farewell to either of them after seeing Caroline in the hall.
Two hours had passed since Liz’s arrival at the hospital, and Jane’s emergency room doctor had just stopped in for a final consultation, inquiring as to whether Jane had an ob-gyn and encouraging her to take prenatal vitamins; Jane informed the doctor that she had been taking them daily for more than ten months. After she was discharged as a patient, it occurred to her and Liz simultaneously that they were without a car.
“Let’s start with Mary,” Liz said. “She’s likelier than Lydia or Kitty to keep her mouth shut.”
“We aren’t calling any of them.” Jane’s voice brooked no argument. “I’m not ready for them to know.”
After a few seconds’ hesitation, Liz asked, “Could Chip give us a ride?”
“He doesn’t get off until seven,” Jane said. “And then he has to do charts.” She was changing from her hospital gown into her clothes as she added, “We’ll take a taxi back to the sushi restaurant and get Dad’s car. And don’t say a word to anyone. Seriously, Lizzy—not even to Dad, in one of those heart-to-hearts you two like to have. Do you swear?”
“Do you have health insurance?” Liz asked.
Jane nodded. “Of course. Do you swear?”
On the one hand, Liz was enormously relieved; on the other hand, there was still a secret bankruptcy and a secret pregnancy to contend with. How exactly had her family members found themselves in such circumstances? “My lips are sealed,” she said.
“CHIP’S PARENTS HAVE a summer house in Maine,” Mrs. Bennet said as Liz chopped cauliflower on a cutting board by the kitchen sink. “In Boothbay Harbor, which is supposed to be stunning. Suzy Hickman’s sister and brother-in-law go there, and Suzy says the views are divine.”
“If you want to help, you can wash the cilantro,” Liz said, and Mrs. Bennet didn’t move from the spot where she stood.
“Obviously, a wedding is usually held where the woman grew up,” she continued, “but if Maine is meaningful to Chip, I’m sure one of you other girls will get married at Knox Church.”
“Has anything specific led you to believe that Chip and Jane are planning their wedding?” Liz asked. “Because that’s not my impression.”
Mrs. Bennet appeared offended. “Well, they’re head over heels!”
“I think they like each other,” Liz said, “but it’s still early.”
“I prefer when a man officiates,” Mrs. Bennet said. “It’s more natural. A lady did Allie Carnes’s wedding, and she had the oddest little squeaky voice.”
Liz had finished chopping the second of two cauliflowers; she lifted the cutting board and dumped its contents into a roasting pan. “I noticed some boxes in Jane’s old room that haven’t been opened,” she said. “What’s in them?”
“Those are presents I’m saving for Christmas.”
It was tempting, but surely ill-advised, to ask which future recipient of the monogrammed royal blue bath towels happened to share Mrs. Bennet’s initials.
“I’ve started thinking about what will happen when you and Dad sell this house,” Liz said. “I wonder if you and I should do some decluttering.”
“We wouldn’t dream of selling the house.” Mrs. Bennet laughed. “We’ll be carried from here feet-first.”
Liz opened the refrigerator, pulled out a bag of cilantro, and turned on the faucet. Avoiding eye contact, she said, “You realize shopping can be an addiction just like alcohol, right? I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of talking to someone.”
“What a preposterous thing to say! Do I appreciate a bargain? I certainly do.”
“What if I take some stuff over to the Resale Shop?” Liz said. “Just dishes we never use, or maybe the furniture in the basement from Granny. You don’t have to be involved.”
“Granny’s furniture is very valuable. Do you know what you ought to be doing, instead of meddling?”
“This is just a guess, but dating my cousin?”
“I’d like to see you do better than Willie.”
Since Liz’s adolescence, when viewing television commercials that celebrated the ostensibly unconditional love of mothers for their children, or on spotting merchandise in stores that honored this unique bond with poems or effusive declarations—picture frames, magnets, oven mitts—she had felt like a foreign exchange student observing the customs of another country. But if Liz wasn’t close to her mother, neither was she consumed with the maternal resentment she had observed in some friends. Her mother had been adequate—often annoying, far from abusive.
Liz turned off the faucet and shook the water from the cilantro. With as little emotion as possible, she said, “As a reminder, not everyone gets married, and bringing it up all the time won’t increase the chances for any of us. I’m definitely not interested in Willie.”
Mrs. Bennet’s tone was thoughtful rather than intentionally cruel. She said, “You have no idea how lucky you are that someone like him would settle for you.”
JANE USUALLY LEFT for Chip’s apartment after dinner, but that night she joined Liz, Kitty, and their mother to watch television in the den. When Jane entered the room, Mrs. Bennet looked up from the catalog she was paging through and said, “Is Chip working tonight, honey?”
Jane nodded, and even if Liz hadn’t known that Chip’s shift finished at seven, she’d have been able to tell that her sister was lying.
Several minutes later, when Kitty and Mrs. Bennet were discussing whether the throat of the prostitute on the legal drama was likelier to have been slit by her ex-husband or her john, Liz murmured to Jane, “Any word from him?”
Somberly, and also quietly, Jane said, “He just called.”
“And?”
“We’re having dinner the day after tomorrow.”
This plan did not sound promising to Liz—the formality of it, the delay. She said, “Did you tell him how far along you are?”
Jane nodded.
So he was aware the baby wasn’t his, Liz thought. And he wasn’t planning to talk about it with Jane for forty-eight hours.
Jane stayed in the den for no more than twenty minutes and went up to bed before the show’s conclusion; apparently, she was unmotivated to find out that the crime had, as Mrs. Bennet had suspected, been committed by the prostitute’s ex-husband.
IN THE MORNING, when Liz’s phone alarm sounded, Jane said with what Liz suspected was feigned bleariness, “I’m going to skip the run today.” Though for all Liz knew, her sister was in the grip of morning sickness; furthermore, Liz had no idea how far into pregna
After using the bathroom and changing, Liz paused in the door of her childhood bedroom and looked at her sister. The curtains still were closed, but sunrise had occurred, and the room was more light than dark. Liz thought of asking if Jane needed anything, but Jane’s breathing was as deep and steady as if she really were asleep again.
LIZ FOUND Mr. Bennet in his study. With his computer screen obscured, as usual, from her view, it struck Liz that she had always given her father the benefit of the doubt, assuming him when in his study to be immersed in matters that were tedious but necessary, his attention to the welfare of the family steadfast and somehow masculine.
She closed the door behind herself and said, “You need to sell the house. I saw online that the Ellebrechts sold theirs for $1.8 million in March. Do you know if they’d renovated their kitchen?”
Mr. Bennet looked at her with amusement. “You’ve been busy.”
“Let’s say you get $1.2 million for this house, which is obviously a very rough guess. You pay off your hospital bills, buy a condo in the three hundred thousand range—I think you can get two to three bedrooms for that in Hyde Park—and you draw up a budget for living expenses and stick to it. Oh, and whatever you think of Obama and his healthcare, you and Mom both need to get insurance through open enrollment, which should start October first.”
“Your mother wouldn’t stand for me selling this house.”
“I don’t see how you have a choice. Do you own your cars or lease them?”
“And what will become of your wastrel sisters?”
“You’re the one who keeps saying they need to leave the nest, and you’re right. There’s no reason for them not to have jobs. How much are the country club’s annual fees?”
“Your mother would rather drink strychnine than not belong to the Cincinnati Country Club.” Mr. Bennet’s expression grew mischievous. “Shall we offer her some?”
“Are there other major expenses I’m not thinking of?” Liz asked. “Mom’s jewelry must be worth something, right? And there’s that portrait in the front hall of whoever it is.”
Seeming impressed, Mr. Bennet said, “My dear, you’re positively cold-blooded.”
“I bet you guys will feel relieved to live somewhere smaller, without so much stuff. Do you prefer a real estate agent you already know or someone outside your social circle?”
“If your mother and I lived somewhere smaller, we might have to actually see each other.”
“The bills you’ve gotten from the hospital,” Liz said. “Have you done anything about them? Have you called anyone?”
For a few seconds, they watched each other silently.
“Give them to me, and I’ll make an appointment and go in with you,” Liz said. “The situation won’t get better by ignoring it.”
JANE’S CONVERSATION WITH Chip had not gone well. Although he hadn’t explicitly accused her of dishonesty, he’d questioned her assertion that she was pregnant via donor insemination rather than through an encounter in New York of the more traditional kind, which was almost the same thing. It wasn’t, Jane told Liz, that he showed a heretofore concealed cruelty; he still seemed like himself, just no longer besotted. “I’m not an idiot,” he’d said. “It’s not like I thought you were a virgin before we met.”
When Jane had insisted that there was absolutely no chance her pregnancy had resulted from anything other than the IUI procedure, he’d said, “Then I don’t understand why you never told me you were trying to have a baby on your own. How could you keep such a huge secret?” And this question, Jane had to concede, was a fair one.
The exchange had taken place at a restaurant downtown, where Jane had driven herself, which, she said to Liz, had been an intimation about the way things would go: Rather than picking her up, Chip had met her in public to break up with her.
“And did he?” Liz asked.
“Not in so many words,” Jane said. “But he claimed it wasn’t a good night for me to come over because he and Caroline needed to talk about some business stuff. And when we said goodbye, he kissed me on the forehead.” Liz could tell that her sister was fighting tears. “He said the news was a lot to digest, and he’d probably need a few days. But, Lizzy, I’m sure it’s over, and I don’t blame him.”
As Jane spoke, it was just after nine P.M., and the two sisters were standing in the Tudor’s basement. Instead of watching television in the den, Liz had decided to investigate this subterranean wilderness to which she normally did not descend except to do laundry or retrieve food from an extra refrigerator; the room containing these appliances was reasonably clear, but three additional rooms were nearly impenetrable storage units for all manner of familial detritus. It was in the largest of the three overstuffed rooms that Jane had found her.
“I should have told him from the beginning,” Jane said. “But I guess I was waiting for things to not work out or else for him to fall for me so completely that he wouldn’t care I was knocked up.”
“He’s a good guy,” Liz said. “I bet he’ll realize this isn’t insurmountable.”
“Maybe.” Jane pointed to a witch’s hat encircled by a dusty orange velvet ribbon. “Isn’t that from my fourth-grade Halloween costume?”
“And check this out.” Liz lifted the hat to reveal a high, narrow marble table with curved legs ending in deer hooves that had once occupied their maternal grandmother’s living room. “Remember how this used to scare Mary?”
“Why are you down here?” Jane asked.
“Oh, you know,” Liz said. “Memory lane.”
LIZ STAYED IN the basement until past midnight, though as fatigue overtook her, she was chagrined to look around and realize that her efforts had, if anything, made the room look worse. She’d been trying to sort items into broad categories—dishware, sports equipment, holiday decorations—and she’d partially succeeded, while also eliminating already-scarce floor space. Plus, she’d encountered at least a dozen spiders, not all of them dead. She’d deal with the mess later, she thought, and she flicked off three light switches and climbed the steps to the kitchen. She didn’t, until it was too late, realize that Lydia and Ham Ryan were kissing avidly by the stove. They noticed her at the same time she noticed them, and they sprang apart, Lydia saying in an accusatory tone, “What the hell?”
“Sorry,” Liz said. “I was in the basement.”
“Hi, Liz,” Ham said.
Lydia scowled. “Doing what?”
Oh, to be twenty-three, Liz thought, to make out in that way that left your lips swollen and your skin blotchy. Not that Lydia was by any means an innocent, but still—something about her kissing her new boyfriend in their parents’ kitchen while everyone else in the house was asleep made Liz wistful.
“I was trying to sort through some junk, and now I’m going up to bed,” Liz said. “Hi, Ham.”
“I read some of your articles online,” Ham said. “The one about Saudi Arabia was fascinating.”
“You don’t need to butter her up,” Lydia said.
Ham laughed. “You think because you don’t care what happens in the Middle East, no one else should?” Looking at Liz, he said, “How long were you over there?”
“Ten days,” Liz said. “And thank you.”
“Don’t bother hitting on her,” Lydia said. “She has some married boyfriend she thinks none of us know about.”
Ham grinned at Liz—his good nature almost made Lydia’s alarming statement seem like no big deal—and then he leaned in and kissed Lydia’s nose. He said, “At the risk of encouraging you, your jealousy is kind of cute.”
POKING AROUND ON websites for local real estate agencies, Liz discovered that a former Seven Hills classmate named Shane Williams was, by all appearances, successfully selling houses to and for Cincinnatians, among them several professional athletes; Bengals and Reds players both offered written testimonies of Shane’s aptitude. While Hyde Park didn’t seem to be the main area where Shane conducted business, he had
However, in spite of Shane’s professional credentials and personal charm, Liz wasn’t certain she should contact him. The reason she wasn’t certain was that Shane was black and her mother was racist. As with her anti-Semitism, Mrs. Bennet’s racism was of the conversational, innuendo-laden variety. She would never be so ignorant as to announce that black people were less intelligent or moral than their white counterparts, but without compunction she’d tell Liz not to shop at the Kroger in Walnut Hills because it was “dirty,” and once at Christmas when Liz had suggested giving Mervetta a cashmere sweater, Mrs. Bennet had said, “For heaven’s sake, Lizzy, Mervetta wouldn’t appreciate cashmere.”
Liz was pretty sure a black adult had never visited her parents’ house in a social capacity. Over the years, black men had fixed the Bennets’ balking dishwasher and overburdened air-conditioning pumps, had removed their garbage and repaved their driveway; and for more than a decade, Mervetta had arrived at the Tudor every other Friday at eight A.M. to vacuum their carpets and scrub their toilets. But it was only ever black girls, Seven Hills classmates, who, in attending birthday parties and sleepovers, had been invited into the Tudor simply to enjoy themselves. And whether or not Liz contacted Shane wouldn’t change this fact; he, too, would be an employee.
Yet surely hiring the kind of white, female, middle-aged real estate agent her parents might run into at the country club was a bad idea, and likely to spread gossip about the financial situation in which the Bennets had found themselves. There was, of course, such an abundance of white, female, middle-aged real estate agents that Liz certainly could find one who didn’t belong to the country club and whom her parents didn’t know. But she liked the idea of working with someone familiar.