Page 7 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

She picked it up, answering the call. She gave Charlie abe quietlook as she spoke. "Hey, Mom. How are you?"

"Eee-lizabeth? Is that you?"

Lizzy blew out a silent breath, hoping Charlie did not notice it and would not be more curious. Whenever her mother elongated the “E” at the beginning of “Elizabeth,” it meant she had been drinking. In this case,day drinking. It had been getting worse. Her mother rarely drank to full drunkenness, but she was now rarely awake without being at least a little tipsy.

Lizzy's father had half-listened to and ironically pitied her mother for years. He paid exactly enough attention to and offered exactly enough sympathy for her mother—who was unable to believe anyone could half-listen to her and was tone-deaf to irony—to keep his wife from detecting the steady, tranquil contempt her felt for her. Lizzy understood her father's feeling and sometimes shared it, although she fought against it. After he died, she sympathized with him even more as the weight of her mother's needs settled on her.

"Yes, Mom, you called me."

"Oh, yes, I did. Why are you always so hard to reach?"

"We've talked about that, Mom. My job."

She had never told her mother what she did, about the CIA. She only talked about her work in generalities. Not in lies, exactly…in vagueness. Her mother's self-absorption kept her from asking Lizzy for specifics and could not be trusted with the truth.

"It's government work, you know, and lots of travel. In fact, I'm going to travel again soon."Not a lie but not quite in focus."I don't know when we'll be able to talk again. You'll have to wait for me to call you. Are you okay?"

"No, Elizabeth." At least the “E” had shortened. "I'm not okay. I'mneverokay. Enervated, I'm enervated. Always." Lizzy's mom could never get that word right. She always thought it meantextremely nervous."My damn nerves are ringing like fire bells. No one understands the torment…"

"Are you taking your prescriptions, Mom?"

Her mother halted for a second, which meant the answer wasno,of course. She was self-medicating. Scotch.

"Yes, I am. It's just work. There’s too much pressure, and I can't get good help."

Lizzy's mother owned a bridal shop in Rochester, New York, where Lizzy had grown up. Her aunt, Christine Gardiner, had managed the shop for years and did most of the work, but somehow Lizzy's mom could never acknowledge the fact. Aunt Christine was a brilliant woman, a college graduate, but she had never needed a job and only managed the bridal shop to have an outlet for her formidable energies. Mrs. Bennet always claimed and seemed to believe thatshewas running the shop, present daily, taking care of the details. However, the truth was that she swooped in now and then, usually late in the day, and stayed only long enough only to leave the window display in disarray or to offend a customer.

"But isn't Aunt Christine there? Let her handle the hiring if you need someone."

"What Ineedis for you to come home." The abrupt shift was typical of her mother. "It's been world without end since you've been here…since I've seen you in person."

"I know, Mom. If this trip doesn't take too long, I promise I'll be home around the holidays." More vagueness, conditional promises. But Lizzy did need to go home; ithadbeen too long. "I want to see you and Aunt Christine. And Uncle Hubert, too. How's he doing?"

Of the three, her uncle was the one in delicate physical health. Mrs. Bennet’s health problems, despite her frequent complaints of aches and palpitations and whirrings (whatever those are) were all mental. But Uncle Hubert’s heart, like Lizzy’s father's, was problematic. He’d had several stents inserted a few months ago, and they seemed to have made a real improvement. Despite being retired, he’d returned to work as an international banker a few days a week, riding the rising tide of renewed energy.

"Oh, he's fine, always mucking around with other people's money," her mother reported peevishly. Lizzy's father had left her mother ample money and Aunt Christine made the shop profitable, yet her mother always thought of herself asscraping by?to use the phrase she liked. She resented the huge house and the fine cars the Gardiners could afford and liked to sniff about hermere Honda."I can never seem to get him to take my money on, make my money work for me."

"Mom, you know he doesn’t do work for individuals. He has clients like Exxon and China. His firm begs him to stay on with them because he's so good at that sort of corporate work. He's not what you need. Go to see a banker and get some advice."

Her mother huffed. Having long ago decided she had a just complaint against her brother-in-law, she was not about to yield it now.

"So, you will be homearound the holidays?" This one time, her mother had actually caught the vagueness, the imprecision, even if it had taken her a moment.

"I will, Mom. If work allows it. I promise."

Her mother was silent. Conversations between them usually went in this meandering way, punctuated only by complaints about her mother's nerves, the Gardiners, and Lizzy’s empty promises. "All right, sweetheart, I will hold you to that."

Lizzy thought she could hang up, but then her mother interjected: "Are you seeing anyone? Met anyone?"

This was the other reliable punctuation of their talks: Lizzy's non-existent love life.Shit.

"Anyone? No." Darcy’s shoulders inexplicably filling her mind, an image of him striding down the hallway in Langley. "No one."

"Lizzy..!"

"Look, Mom, I've got to go. Talk to you again when I can. Please don't call me. I'll be busy. I'll call you."

"But, Lizzy, you need to find someone. You know what the Good Book says, 'It's not good for woman to be alone.'"

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