Explaining her view to her sisters, or to anyone else, was out of the question. Everyone she knew was preoccupied with coupling, either for themselves or for others, and Mary understood that trying to persuade them would be an exercise not only in futility but also in tedium. (And with regard to exercising: That was something else Mary didn’t do, nor did she diet, shave her legs or underarms, pluck her eyebrows, or wear makeup. She showered daily, brushed her teeth, and applied deodorant, a routine she deemed more than adequate in terms of holding up her end of society’s hygiene bargain.)
Though Mary knew that her sisters considered her strange, and would consider her more so were she to articulate her true outlook, she observed with a nearly anthropological derision their elaborate fitness rituals and fakely scented lotions and the hours—nay, years—they devoted to making some man see them in a particular way; they reminded her of plastic ballerinas inside music boxes, twirling in their private orbits of narcissism.
She did not detest her sisters, she did not consider them evil—certainly shallow, but not evil—and yet if she weren’t related to them, she wouldn’t spend time in their company. Then again, she wouldn’t spend time in the company of most people.
Even the members of her bowling league, who were the closest approximation Mary came to a community, weren’t individuals she saw except on Tuesday nights. Mary’s team consisted of two other women and two men, and the next youngest person after her was eighteen years her senior. Among their appealing qualities was that Mary stood no chance of encountering any of them at the Cincinnati Country Club.
Really, it was the sport rather than the people that drew Mary week in and week out to Madison Bowl. Every time she entered the building, with its scent of gymnasium and french fries, its rhythmic knocking of heavy polyurethane against wood, excitement activated her salivary glands.
If the first episode of Eligible: Chip & Jane’s Road to the Altar had fallen on a night other than Tuesday, Mary might have watched it or she might not have; the decision would have depended on what else she had in the way of P & G deadlines or pleasure reading. As it was, the first episode did air on a Tuesday, and Mary didn’t for a moment consider skipping bowling. Thus, at the exact moment her image first flashed on screens all over the country (“Mary Bennet: ‘The Scholar’?”), she was waiting her turn in lane 10. When Felicia, who was Mary’s teammate and a fifty-seven-year-old special education teacher, moved out of the way, Mary walked to the ball return, inserted her fingers into her ball (she used one that weighed fourteen pounds), lifted it from the rack, purposefully approached the foul line while extending her right arm behind her, kept her gaze on the pins, and released. The ball surged down the oiled wood lane. In the seconds just before it collided with the pins, Mary knew that a strike would occur, and then it happened: All the pins fell, and when they did, it was so, so satisfying. As the pinsetter descended, Mary balled her right hand, bent her arm, and pulled it back in fist-pumping victory. Her sisters, she thought, could have their crushes and courtships, their histrionics and reconciliations. For Mary, this was heaven.
For Samuel Park,
Austen devotee and beloved friend
Acknowledgments
I’m incredibly lucky to work closely with a trio of strong, smart, funny women: my agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh; my editor, Jennifer Hershey; and my publicist, Maria Braeckel.
For advocating on my behalf, and for being people with whom it’s always a pleasure to interact, I’m thankful to many others at WME, including Cathryn Summerhayes, Raffaella DeAngelis, Tracy Fisher, Alicia Gordon, Erin Conroy, Suzanne Gluck, Eve Attermann, Eric Zohn, Maggie Shapiro, Katie Giarla, and Elizabeth Goodstein.
At Random House, I have benefited enormously from the support and wisdom of Gina Centrello, Avideh Bashirrad, Theresa Zoro, Sally Marvin, Leigh Marchant, Susan Kamil, Tom Perry, Sanyu Dillon, Caitlin McCaskey, Anastasia Whalen, Anne Speyer, Allyson Lord, Christine Mykityshyn, Janet Wygal, Bonnie Thompson, Alaina Waagner, Maggie Oberrender, Paolo Pepe, Robbin Schiff, and Liz Eno.
In the U.K., I’m indebted to Louisa Joyner and Katie Espiner, who approached me with the idea for this book, as well as to Kate Elton, Jaime Frost, Suzie Dooré, Cassie Brown, and Charlotte Cray at Borough Press, who saw it through to the end. I am appreciative of my friends at Transworld, among them Marianne Velmans and Patsy Irwin, who permitted a professional excursion.