Jane Austen’s beloved characters… brought together… in 21st c. Atlanta.
Previous Story: “Wait”
The Right One
Mary Crawford emerged refreshed from her nap at 4:30 p.m., ready for the sold-out, Saturday-after-Thanksgiving performance. She would arrive at the Woodruff Arts Center around 6:30 to tune her harp and warm up her fingers. In the meantime, she wandered around her brother’s loft apartment in her robe and slippers looking at their family photos and trying not to disturb Henry who sat on the sofa reviewing his lines for an upcoming play.
She lingered over an early photo her parents had used as their Christmas card that year when Henry and she had been fourteen and thirteen years old, taken a week before the car accident that left them with trust funds for comfort. Her mom had made her wear that fuzzy sweater she hated. The memory of that year felt like a pill lodged in her throat.
Most of Henry’s pictures on his corkboard Wall of Fame featured his co-stars from various theater productions, the famous people he’d met, and some blasts from the past. There were Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy at some gala or other. There were Anne and Fred Wentworth on that cruise that Henry had performed on. Oh, no, was Henry still hanging out with George Wickham? He could lead a brick wall astray. Not that Henry needed help. Wow, was that Meg Dashwood? She had really grown into a beauty. Who was…
“Hold on, is that Isabella Thorpe?” Mary blurted out. “Those can’t be real. She wasn’t that buxom in high school.”
“Spoken like a jealous woman,” Henry said, turning a page.
“Real or not real?”
“How would I know?” Henry said, not looking up.
“Oh, please. Don’t tell me you’re the only man in Atlanta who hasn’t –” Mary stopped and cocked her head, wincing like a note had sounded out of tune. “Bad habit that isn’t me anymore,” she said. “Sorry. That’s something I would have said… many times in the past, but… I’m tired of that person.” She went back to looking at the pictures while Henry watched her.
After a considered silence, he said, “Something going on with you, Mary?” When she didn’t respond, he said, “Whatever happened with you and Judd? You said you broke up a few months ago, but I kinda thought you thought he was the one.”
“Hmmm,” Mary said, still looking at the pictures. “‘The One.’ We’re a generation of women looking for The One.”
“Yeah, I love being that guy. For a night or two.”
Turning around, she said, “The One who wants to get married but doesn’t want me to quit my career or settle down. The One who will do everything 50-50: laundry, dishes, cleaning, diapers. The One who will never cheat on me but will never want me to have sex at inconvenient times. The Right One will also be tall and handsome and rich with the potential to be a good father with no emotional baggage. Know anyone like that, Henry?”
Henry snorted and went back to his script.
“No, it turns out no one else knows him either. Judd wasn’t The Right One. Neither was Tim or Larry or Dev or Scott.”
“Or Abe.”
Mary frowned. Certainly not Abe. “And after a decade of looking, I started to realize that The Right One is a mythical beast whom, it turns out, no one has actually ever sighted.” She sat down next to Henry on the sofa and whispered, “Oh, there are rumors of him.” She gestured toward the Wall of Fame. “I sometimes think Charles Bingley or Fitz Darcy fits the description pretty well.” She mused on those tall, handsome, rich men for a moment. “But then, you never know what goes on behind closed doors. Others seem to have found The Right One, but so many marriages end in divorce.”
“Biological clock ticking? You are 32.”
“Shhhh. Shhhh. No, it’s more like… rather than custom order the right man or complain that no one is good enough… I’ve decided that I want to be good enough.”
“Because the world’s leading concert harpist isn’t already good enough?”
“No… no… I don’t know. I can’t explain.” She looked at her brother studying his script. “There aren’t any pictures of your son on that wall. How is he?”
There was a long pause before he said, “I don’t know. I’m not allowed to see him.”
The siblings sat in silence on the sofa listening to the sounds of traffic in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, the cavernous space of the converted warehouse yawning around them, increasing their isolation.
After several minutes, Mary broke the silence. “Do you ever think about the Bertrams?”
“Maria Bertram gave birth to my son. She crosses my mind once in a while.”
“I mean Fanny and Edmund… What almost happened…”
Henry didn’t respond.
“I got the sense… just tell me if you don’t want to talk about it… but I got the sense at the time that Fanny would have been the right one for you – that everything would have turned out well and you both would have been happy… if –” The conclusion was too much for Mary to verbalize.
“If I’d been who I should’ve been.”
Yes, Mary thought. She said, “And I don’t mean to say that you’re the only one. I messed everything up with Edmund.”
“You never would have been happy with Ed, Mary. You could not be a pastor’s wife. I believe it helps to be a Christian.”
“Right. I don’t mean that I wish I’d married Ed. Definitely not. I mean… I’m always trying to mold men into a perfect fit for myself without any consideration of… of how… I don’t know.”
“Of how you need to change?”
“Yes.” Another silence.
“So that’s what happened with Judd? You decided you needed to change?”
“I was trying to describe to him this sense that I wanted something more – more from him, certainly, but more from myself. And he laughed and said what we had was perfect. I was free to travel the world and pursue my dreams, and he was free to… to do whatever he does when I’m not around. I think it suited him perfectly.
“But I told him I realized that wanting more from him would require me to sacrifice, too – that I would need to scale back my concert schedule – even be willing to give it all up if I wanted something more – if I wanted a family with a committed husband and children.”
“What did he say?”
Mary faced Henry and said, “It was the turning point of my life. He laughed and said, ‘If you want that, why are you with me?’”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I left and went to a hotel and thought about it all night. The next day, I met him for breakfast and thanked him for opening my eyes. I haven’t seen him since.”
Henry waited for the sequel. “So…. What’s changed? You’re still touring. You’ve been in thirty cities in the last six months. I don’t see you slowing down.”
“No, but I’m willing to. Ready to. I have a sense that something is about to happen.” She wrapped her robe tighter around her. “Do you ever see Tom Bertram?”
“What? No, I don’t see any of the Bertrams. I permanently scuttled that relationship.”
“Well, I do.”
“Do what? See Tom? Where?”
“All the time. All over the world.”
Henry looked disgusted. “Are you about to tell me that his image is engraved on your heart or something nauseating like that?”
“No, I literally see him at least once a month all over the world.”
“Where?”
“At my concerts. He sits to my right on the third row. Just once or twice a month. I never know when he’ll be there or where in the world I’ll see him.”
“Well, how is he? I can’t believe he’s speaking to us.”
“He’s not. He never speaks to me or tries to see me. Even after 10 years…”
“I’m sorry, hold on. He’s pursuing you around the world and never speaks to you? He doesn’t bring you flowers and take you out to dinner afterwards? Isn’t that what your fans always do?”
“Yes. No, he never does that. I don’t think he’s there for me. I think he travels a lot for business and loves the harp.”
“That’s ridiculous. This is a heterosexual man we’re talking about. A man with some serious baggage, by the way. He’s a raging alcoholic whose sister I impregnated, destroying her marriage and making her infamous. It doesn’t sound to me like he’s The One.”
“Oh, you didn’t destroy my chances all by yourself. Do you recall that I entered the Bertram household at sixteen years of age, fully prepared to seduce the oldest son, fresh out of college? I targeted him and valued him only for his earning potential.”
“I don’t see you as the long-suffering wife of an alcoholic. Good thing you changed your mind.”
“Good thing I targeted Edmund instead? Let’s not call anything that followed a good thing.”
“Fine. What in the world makes you consider Tom Bertram now?”
“I’ve changed.”
“But he’s an alcoholic.”
“And I guess always will be, but he’s changed.”
“You can tell that from the third row?”
“I can tell.” She unfolded herself and stood to stretch. “But it doesn’t matter.”
It was time to shower and get ready for wardrobe to arrive to do her hair and makeup.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said again. “He doesn’t want anything to do with us. And I’m not going to target him again – in search of The Right One.”
She headed toward the bathroom and turned at the door. “Wouldn’t it be nice if things worked out the way they might have if we hadn’t screwed everything up?”
Henry looked past her with hollow eyes.
“But that’s not how real life works,” she said as she clicked on the bathroom light and closed the door.
Next Story: “Lip Service”
Find Jane Austen’s characters in her novels:
Mary and Henry Crawford and Tom Bertram in Mansfield Park
Fitzwilliam Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet (Darcy) and George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice
Captain Frederick Wentworth and Anne Elliot (Wentworth) in Persuasion
Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey
Margaret Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility