In the meantime, the eldest Bennet sisters fell quickly into certain patterns. They slept in twin beds in the third-floor room that, when they were growing up, had belonged to Liz. She’d set the alarm on her cellphone for seven o’clock, and they’d rise and run together before the day grew too hot: around the curve of Grandin Road, past the bulge of the Cincinnati Country Club, right on Madison Road and again on Observatory, then up the long incline of Edwards Road’s first hill, which was gently graded but endless, and its second hill, which was short and steep. Back at home, they’d eat cereal, take turns showering, then determine what needed to be accomplished that day.
Originally overshadowed by their father’s ill health, but asserting itself with increasing insistence as Mr. Bennet improved, was the sisters’ realization that the Tudor, built in 1903, was in a state of profound disrepair. For the last twenty years, Liz and Jane had made three-day visits home, usually around the holidays, and Liz realized in retrospect that her mother had likely spent weeks preparing for their arrival. This time, when Mrs. Bennet hadn’t prepared at all, mail lay in stacks on the marble table in the entry hall; mold grew in the basin of the third-floor toilet; spiderwebs clung to light fixtures and the corners of ceilings; and Jane and Liz were sharing a room because the bed and most of the floor in the adjacent room that had once belonged to Jane were blocked by an assortment of boxes, some empty save for bubble wrap but some as yet unopened, addressed by various high-end retailers to Mrs. Frederick M. Bennet. The day before her father had been discharged from the hospital, Liz had used the blade of a scissors to open three packages, which contained, respectively, a plush cream-colored throw pillow overlaid by an embroidered pineapple; a set of royal blue bath towels featuring Mrs. Bennet’s monogram; and twelve dessert plates with Yorkshire terriers on them (the Bennets had never owned a Yorkshire terrier—or, for that matter, any other breed of dog).
That her mother devoted extensive attention to housewares was not news; the usual impetus for Mrs. Bennet to call Liz in New York was to ask whether she was in need of, say, a porcelain teapot with an ivy motif that normally cost $260 but was on sale for $230. Invariably, without broaching the topic of who might pay for the teapot in question, Liz ruefully declined; it sounded charming, but she had such limited space, and also, she’d remind her mother, she wasn’t a huge tea drinker. Once, years before, Liz had been talked into accepting as a gift a large gold-rimmed platter—“For your dinner parties!” Mrs. Bennet had said brightly—but upon learning eighteen months later that Liz had during that time held no dinner parties, Mrs. Bennet had insisted that Liz give the platter back. Shipping it had cost $55. So no, it wasn’t a secret that her mother fetishized all manner of domestic décor, but the sheer quantity in Jane’s former bedroom, plus the fact of so many boxes being unopened, raised for Liz the question of whether some type of pathology might be involved.
Meanwhile, on an almost daily basis, the Tudor revealed its failures: dripping faucets, splintering floorboards, obscurely sized sconce lightbulbs that had burned out. In many instances, it was unclear to Liz whether a particular predicament, such as the eight-foot-square water-stained patch on the eastern side of the living room wall, was new or whether her parents and sisters had simply been turning a blind eye to it for months or years.
The three acres of land surrounding the Tudor presented its own set of complications, including an extensive growth of poison ivy behind the house and a fungus on the large sycamore tree under which Liz had once held picnics for her dolls. As far as she could tell, her father had for quite some time done no more outside than mow the grass and, since getting sick, had not even done that. It occurred to Liz one day, as she waited on hold for an estimate from a yard service, that her parents’ home was like an extremely obese person who could no longer see, touch, or maintain jurisdiction over all of his body; there was simply too much of it, and he—they—had grown weary and inflexible.
During the hours she’d allotted each day for work, Liz would open her laptop on the pink Formica desk her parents had purchased for her in 1987 and respond to queries from Mascara editors about a recent article she’d turned in, schedule or conduct interviews, fend off or follow up with publicists. In addition to features on varying topics, Liz wrote three mini-profiles each month for Mascara’s long-running “Women Who Dare” column—for example, a corporal in Iraq, a blind aerobics instructor, or a principal in Wichita who’d saved her students from a tornado. Although Liz privately thought of the subjects as “Attractive, Well-Groomed Women Who Dare,” finding and interviewing such individuals was her favorite part of her job.
Jane, by contrast, was not attempting to work from Cincinnati. A few times a week, she’d attend a yoga class at a studio in Clifton, but in the capacity of student rather than teacher. Yet still, for both women, the days passed surprisingly quickly, a cycle of morning runs, doctors’ appointments, errands, meal preparation, and family dinners. May had soon turned into June and June into July.