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“So I had these shoes,” says Lydia, and normally Lizzie would just roll her eyes and wait for it to be over, but she’s trying to be better about that lately.
Lydia likes to list off her prizes after a shopping trip the same way Lizzie likes to list off the little treasures she finds on thrift store bookshelves and they both resigned themselves a long time ago to the knowledge that the other didn’t care. But this is different. Lydia still doesn’t sound the way she used to and there’s a hard edge to her voice, like she’s riding a sharp line between fury and laughter.
At least she’s not whispering.
“They were turquoise, and they were perfect, and I had just finished breaking them in. I looked like a movie star in those shoes,” says Lydia. Lizzie thinks about reminding her that she looks like a movie star in everything, but she’s afraid that if she interrupts then Lydia will just stop talking, and she’s been so quiet for so long.
Lizzie turns away from the computer, bringing her feet up to rest on the edge of the bed, next to where Lydia’s sitting. Valentine’s Day is coming up fast, and lately Lydia hasn’t really been getting dressed. She’s been rocking oversized pajamas and fuzzy pink bunny slippers and on several occasions she’s shown up at the breakfast table wearing huge reflective sunglasses.
She looks like a movie star in those, too.
“It was supposed to be a date, so I wore them,” Lydia continues, and she glances down at her fuzzy slippers and wiggles her feet. “And he ended up needing to run errands all over town, with me driving because he doesn’t have a car, and he was supposed to be dropping off this couch for his buddy.”
After Lizzie finally watched all of Lydia’s videos, when Lydia still wasn’t speaking to her, Lizzie went out and got really, really drunk. She told some guy in the bar a very long and probably nonsensical story about how everything gets complicated and dumb when you grow up, and then she sat there nursing a Long Island and thinking about the word ‘energetic.’
“It had just rained,” says Lydia, “and his buddy didn’t have any kind of path to the door except the driveway, which was full of cars, so we had to carry it through the yard and my feet sank in, practically down to the ankle. And those stupid shoes weren’t built to take that. I spent hours trying to get them cleaned up while he was playing Madden or something, and he just kept laughing and telling me it was funny.”
Lydia looks up, mouth tight, eyes bright, jaw tense. She always looks like she’s facing a firing squad these days. “They were never the same. They were too stiff, I couldn’t break them in again. That was our relationship. Those shoes were our whole damn relationship, and I laughed about it because he told me it was funny.”
Lizzie says, “I’m sorry,” without knowing how to articulate what for.
Lydia blows her hair out of her face and shrugs. “Do you want to watch Mulan?”
“Sure,” says Lizzie, feeling helpless. Lydia doesn’t move, so Lizzie pulls the movie up on the computer and turns the screen to face the bed before moving out of the chair to join her sister.
When Lydia tugs and prods Lizzie into a position that allows Lydia to more comfortably curl up against her side, Lizzie just lets her and hugs her close.
The thing about Darcy - or one of the many things about Darcy, since Lizzie’s had to resign herself to the fact that there’s a lot she doesn’t know about him - is that he never stopped and said, ‘I just can’t.’ He watched all of her videos in one night and then he kept watching them, and Lizzie’s not sure how to fathom what that means about either of them but she has a feeling that it reflects poorly on her.
It’s probably a stupid thing to think about, but she thinks about it a lot.
She’s spent the last several days trying to write her thesis paper and going over old footage, which makes her angry and sad in a lot of different ways for a lot of different reasons. As usual, she rolled her eyes when she watched the one where her mother made Jane and Bing’s break-up all about herself, but then Lizzie watched herself making Wickham’s betrayal all about her, and she might as well have put on a fine hat and had herself a nice panic for all the difference there was.
She wants to apologize again, but Lydia’s giggling about something Mulan’s grandmother said, so Lizzie holds her tongue.
Jane joins them in the middle of the movie and after it’s over she and Lydia start joking around so Lizzie slips out to let them have their fun and a few minutes later she finds herself in the doorway to her father’s office, watching him scowl at the pages of a book that he doesn’t actually seem to be reading.
“Any luck?” asks Lizzie, making him startle.
“No, nothing,” he says with a sigh before he snaps the book shut and rubs his eyes. He tilts his head at her. “You look more rundown than usual. Are you fighting with your sister again?”
“No,” says Lizzie. “I just - I think I realized that I’m more like mom than I thought I was.”
Her turmoil must show all over her face because that actually makes him laugh for so long that she starts to feel ridiculous. “I’m serious,” she says, trying not to smile as he wipes tears away from his eyes. “I was so worried about appearances and about me and I just left her to -”
Her voice catches, surprising both of them, and Mr. Bennet sobers instantly.
Lizzie swallows and says, “She needed somebody and I wasn’t there for her.” She looks away as the shame uncurls within her stomach.
“Come here,” says Mr. Bennet. Lizzie takes a few halting steps into the room and her father stands up and pulls her closer so that he can wrap his arms around her and rest his chin on the top of her head.
“I didn’t notice either,” he says, “and I was here. I was right here and I let some jerk with abs like Jesus make her feel like she was all alone.”
Lizzie laughs at that in spite of herself.
“But I did watch those videos you girls have been making, so I know that you know your mother loves you very much, and she means well.”
“Yeah,” says Lizzie.
“So maybe there’s nothing so terrible about having a few things in common with her. Maybe you can see this as an opportunity to do better. And remember that I love you.”
“Even when I have myself a good mom-sized panic?” asks Lizzie.
“I love her, too, you know,” says Mr. Bennet. He takes a step back, kisses her forehead, and sits down again.
Lizzie folds her arms, feeling small and vulnerable and suddenly cold.
“So,” he says, “William Darcy.”
With no further context, Lizzie has no idea what it means when he raises an eyebrow and waits for her to reply.
“What about him?” she asks.
“Have you heard from him, since you’ve been back?”
Lizzie’s surprised by how badly she wishes she could say yes. “He’s busy, being CEO of Pemberley Digital and everything.” She tries to laugh about it, but it sounds weak and nervous, so she hurries to keep talking instead. “Besides, if he was more involved, George would just try and get more money out of him and that would open old wounds. He’s probably glad I turned him down now.”
Her father harrumphs at that but he doesn’t say anything else about it, and Lizzie doesn’t really want to keep talking about Darcy because it fills her with confusing twisty feelings, so she goes back to Lydia’s room. She doesn’t exactly feel better, but she feels bad for different reasons, and Darcy-related sadness is at least not something that makes it hard for her to look Lydia in the eye. She rejoins her sisters to find that they’ve started watching Princess Bride, and Lizzie crawls back onto the bed to watch it with them.
* * *
Lydia has spent the last several years casually reminding Lizzie how lame she is, so Lizzie decides to embrace it. On Wednesday afternoon, after the site gets taken down, Lydia and their dad settle in to watch Independence Day and Lizzie and Jane spend two hours cutting hearts out of colorful paper.
Jane helps her write things on them, like ‘we’re proud of you,’ and ‘we love you’ and ‘you’re amazing,’ and they hide the hearts all over Lydia’s room, tucked into her pockets and shoes, underneath her pillow.
* * *
“Have you called Gigi?”
Lizzie is using Lydia’s computer to work on her thesis again, and Lydia’s laying on the bed with her feet propped up on the wall and her head hanging off the edge of the mattress, watching Lizzie upside-down. It’s Valentine’s Day and Lydia’s nails are shiny gold.
“No,” says Lizzie. She muted the computer so she could write, but the videos have kept playing and the playlist has gotten back to Checks and Balances. Lizzie closes the window before Gigi starts crying.
“Why?” asks Lydia.
Lizzie doesn’t have an answer. For a Communications major, she’s improbably terrible at communication.
Lydia’s about to say something else about Gigi when she finds a piece of paper poking out of her cell phone cover and pops it off to discover yet another little heart. This one says, ‘you’re my favorite person!’
“Oh my god,” says Lydia. “Reason number forty-six why Lizzie Bennet is perpetually single.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Lizzie.
“You made a bazillion valentines and gave them all to your sister,” says Lydia. “Totes lame.”
But she tucks the heart into her pocket.
* * *
Lydia walks into the kitchen after school one day and Mrs. Bennet says, “Is George coming over for dinner, honey?”
Lizzie and Jane both wince and Mr. Bennet goes to nudge a mug of tea off the counter as a distraction but Lydia stops it before it tips over the edge.
“I dumped George, mom,” she says. “He was an asshole.”
“Oh? But he always seemed so nice,” says Mrs. Bennet.
“He wasn’t,” says Lydia.
“Well,” says Mrs. Bennet, “you just say the word and your father will beat that boy to a pulp.”
Lydia gives her a crooked smile. “Thanks, but I’ve got it taken care of.”
She’s out of the room again before Lizzie has a chance to ask her what that means.