Liz had spent her entire professional life working at magazines, having been hired out of college as a fact-checker at a weekly publication known for its incisive coverage of politics and culture. From there, she had jumped to Mascara, a monthly women’s magazine she had subscribed to since the age of fourteen, drawn equally to its feminist stances and its unapologetic embrace of shoes and cosmetics. First she was an assistant editor, then an associate editor, then a features editor; but at the age of thirty-one, realizing that her passion was telling stories rather than editing them, Liz had become Mascara’s writer-at-large, a position she still occupied. Though writing tended to pay less than editing, Liz believed she had a dream job: She traveled regularly and interviewed accomplished and sometimes famous individuals. However, her achievements did not impress her own family. Her father still, after all this time, pretended not to remember Mascara’s name. “How’s everything at Nail Polish?” he’d ask or “Any new developments at Lipstick?” Mary often told Liz that Mascara reinforced oppressive and exclusionary standards of beauty; even Lydia and Kitty, who had no problem with oppressive and exclusionary standards of beauty, were uninterested in the publication, likely because they were fans of neither magazines nor books and confined their reading to the screens of their phones.
And yet, if Liz’s job underwhelmed those close to her, its flexible nature was what had allowed her to remain at home during her father’s convalescence, and the situation was similar for Jane, who had taken a leave of absence from the yoga studio where she was employed. Five weeks earlier, the two sisters had traveled to Cincinnati unsure of the outcome of, and greatly rattled by, Mr. Bennet’s surgery. By the time it was clear that he would make a full recovery, Liz and Jane were deeply involved in both his recuperation and the day-to-day proceedings of the household: They grocery shopped and prepared cardiac-friendly meals for the entire family; they took turns transporting Mr. Bennet to his doctors’ appointments, including to the orthopedist treating the arm Mr. Bennet had broken when he’d lost consciousness during his original heart incident and had fallen at the top of the stairs in the second-floor hall. (Because he still wore a cast on his right arm, Mr. Bennet was unable to drive himself.) Additionally, though they had made little progress so far, Liz and Jane intended to address the cluttered and dusty condition into which the Tudor had deteriorated.
While their sisters could in theory have performed all such tasks, the younger women appeared disinclined. Though also clearly rattled by their father’s heart incident, they weren’t rattled in a way that caused them to alter their daily schedules: Lydia and Kitty carried on with CrossFit and leisurely restaurant lunches, while Mary emerged from her room erratically to attempt to engage family members in discussions of mortality. In the kitchen, observing her father drinking the powdered-psyllium-seed-husk-based liquid meant to offset the constipating effects of his pain medication, Mary had announced that she considered the Native American view of life and death as cyclical to be far more advanced than the Western proclivity for heroic measures, at which point Mr. Bennet had poured the remainder of his beverage down the sink, said, “For Christ’s sake, Mary, put a sock in it,” and left the room.
Mrs. Bennet expressed great concern about her husband’s plight—indeed, she could hardly speak of the evening on which he’d been hospitalized without sobbing at the recollection of the fright it had caused her—but she could not act as his nurse or chauffeur because of her many Women’s League luncheon duties. “What if you ask somebody else on the committee to take over and you’re the chair next year instead?” Liz had inquired one day when Mr. Bennet was still in the hospital. Her mother had looked at her in horror.
“Why, I’d never hear the end of it,” Mrs. Bennet said. “Lizzy, all those items being solicited for the silent auction—I’m the one keeping track of them.”
“Then how about creating an online spreadsheet that everyone can see?” Because Mrs. Bennet wasn’t proficient with a computer, Liz added, “I can help you.”
“It’s out of the question,” Mrs. Bennet said. “I’m also the one who’s been talking to the florist, and I’m the one who had the idea to do napkins with the league’s insignia. You can’t pass off things like that in midstream.”
“Does Mom secretly hate Dad?” Liz asked Jane the next morning when the two sisters were out for a run. “Because she’s acting really unsupportive.”