Pride, Prejudice, and Porn

Part 11

While my big brother was being “massaged” by Chuck I returned downstairs to the enormous Norwood living room. There was still no sign of Caroline or Fitz. I wasn’t in the mood for TV so I went into the library to see if I could find something else to read. Browsing through the shelves I was excited to find a beautiful leather-bound set of the novels of Jane Austen. Last year in my English Lit class I had my first exposure to her writing when we read “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s hard to describe how much I loved that book! At first, I couldn’t figure out why it was considered “great literature.” It just seemed like a wonderful romantic romp in Georgian England, with captivating characters, dishy dialogue, and a really satisfying happy ending. It was only later that I came to fully appreciate the supreme skill and artistry with which Austen draws her characters, weaves her plots, and creates such sparkling, memorable dialogues. Her novels may have been written two hundred years ago, but they seem as fresh,  funny, and accessible as when they were first published!

In our Lit class the professor had mentioned that many people consider “Emma” to be the finest of Austen’s novels, so I decided to take that volume of the set to amuse myself. I closed the library doors and plunked myself into a comfortable wing chair in a well-lit corner of the living room to become acquainted with Emma Woodhouse, Mr. Knightley, and their world of Highbury. 

There are some advantages to being small. One of them is being unobtrusive, and not always immediately noticed. Immersed as I was in “Emma,” in a half-turned high-backed chair in a far corner of the room, I barely noticed when Fitz and Caroline came into the living room, and I don’t think they saw me at all. For a while I didn’t pay much attention to them, but before long Caroline’s voice began intruding into my consciousness. She was speaking to Fitz in her trademark, sharp-edged tone, and my ears perked up when I heard her mention the name “Bennett.” 

“Really, Fitz!” Caroline exclaimed. “I still can’t get over what we heard Mrs. Bennett raving on about at the Historical Society Ball, at the top of her lungs! She obviously thinks Chuck is going to get serious about Jamie! Can you imagine? Not that Jamie isn’t a sweet guy, and he’s certainly good-looking, but the idea of Chuck getting saddled with the Bennetts as in-laws is insane. The father is odd. The mother is a social-climbing airhead. The kids are all nice-looking, I’ll give you that, except, well, for that Maria, but there’s nothing special about any of them, and the other two girls are just brainless boy-crazed Marine camp followers! Imagine them as relations to the Bingham family!”

“Aren’t you jumping to conclusions, Caroline?” asked Fitz. “We’ve only been here a few weeks and you’re already assuming Chuck is going to propose to Jamie? I agree with you, though, about Mrs. Bennett and the youngest girls. They certainly made a spectacle of themselves at the ball. But I like Jamie and Izzy. And Chuck’s certainly dated far worse guys than Jamie. In fact, Jamie’s the best-looking guy Chuck’s ever dated. By far! And he’s definitely a sweetheart. You have to remember I know just about everyone Chuck’s gone out with. We were both at boarding school and college together, after all!” 

“If I thought it were just a fling I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Caroline. “But I’m not so sure it is. Chuck’s besotted with Jamie, from what I can see. And it looks like Jamie feels the same way about Chuck. If this keeps up, they’re going to be looking for a wedding planner before long!”

“Caroline, you’re treading on dangerous ground here. Are you trying to break them up?”

“Well, think about it, Fitz. I know you and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on things, but really, do you want your best friend married to a bunch of Kentucky yokels? Chuck could do so much better for himself.”

“Socially and class-wise, I suppose you’re right. But if Jamie’s the guy that will make him happy, I don’t think Chuck’s going to be too concerned about the in-laws. It’s not like they’ll all have to live together!”

“Well, I don’t think it would be a bad thing if we got the two of them separated for a while,” said Caroline. “At least long enough to see if Chuck feels the same way about Jamie when he’s not constantly together with him.”

“Caroline, I know you want the best for Chuck. But if you meddle and this all backfires, you risk losing your relationship with your only brother. Think carefully about that.”

“Well, I can’t help wishing that you and Chuck would get married! You’ve both known each other for years, you’re best friends, and you have so much else in common.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen. You’re right, Chuck is my closest friend, and because of that I know that we wouldn’t be compatible as a married couple. Let’s leave it at that, OK? But maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing if there were a time-out for Chuck and Jamie to sort out their feelings when they’re not constantly together wanting to get into each other’s pants! I’ll have to think about it. But I don’t want to risk losing my best friend if this blows up, any more than I think you want to lose your brother.”

I sat in my unobserved distant corner of the living room, quietly steaming. Apparently Fitz and Caroline hadn’t seen me sitting there. 

“Caroline,” I heard Fitz say, “I’m outta here. As soon as I can round up Chuck we’re supposed to drive into Marysville to take care of a few things. I’ll think about what you said, but I’m not sure that this would be a smart thing to do. Oh, anything you need while we’re in town?”

“Poisoned apples?” I thought to myself. Although I didn’t think you’d find them around Marysville. I’m sure someone in Caroline’s crowd in Cleveland has a recipe for them, though! 

Fitz went upstairs, without ever seeing me, as far as I could tell. As soon as he was out of the room Caroline was on her cell phone.

“Hi, Bitsy?” Ugh! She was talking to her dreary sister, the one married to Mr. Forgettable.

“Listen, sis. I tried planting the seed with Fitz about trying to break up Chuck and Jamie. I don’t think Fitz realizes how far gone Chuck is for Jamie. If we don’t bust this up soon the Binghams will be the laughingstock of Cleveland society! Not only marrying down, but to a family of bumpkins like the Bennetts! No money, no class, nothing the least bit elegant about them!”

I couldn’t hear Bitsy’s end of the conversation, of course, but I gathered she wasn’t disagreeing with Caroline.

“Exactly. But you know Chuck, Bitsy. He worships Fitz. So unless I can convince Fitz that Jamie isn’t the right guy for Chuck I don’t see how I can pry Chuck out of Hartfield County and away from Jamie. Chuck isn’t going to listen to me unless Fitz is telling him the same thing! And if we can get Chuck away from Jamie, there’s still a chance we can get him and Fitz interested in each other as more than best friends. Just imagine the Bingham and Darcy families and fortunes joined! It would be the social and financial event of the decade!”

Off in my corner of the room I was about to become volcanic. Now I knew why I didn’t like Caroline. What a complete, scheming bitch!

“Uh, huh. Well, I’m going to try to work on Fitz some more to convince him I’m right about this. But I’ve got to run and check with the housekeeper about dinner. We’ll talk later, hon. But we Binghams manage to get our way, and I’m not going to let some country bumpkins spoil our plans.” 

Caroline was walking out into the hall as she said this and I heard no more of her conversation with Bitsy. But I’d heard more than enough. I snuck to the living room door to see Caroline far down the hallway heading for the kitchen, so I darted to the stairway and ran up quietly to my room. Thank God for sneakers! Nothing to make noise with, unlike Caroline’s ridiculous stilettos, still clicking their way down the long hallway.

Part 12

Back in my room I found myself in complete turmoil over what I’d heard Caroline talking about with Fitz and then with her sister Bitsy! It really was hard to know what to think, and what to do! Should I tell Jamie and Chuck what Caroline was up to? And what about Fitz? Where was he, really, in all this? He didn’t seem to be genuinely gung-ho about Caroline’s scheme. Was he just trying to humor her by being ambivalent about her idea of trying to break up Chuck and Jamie? As far I could tell he likes Jamie, and I seemed to have grown on him a bit even though, at the ball, he’d said I wasn’t attractive enough for him to ask me to dance. He’d been perfectly nice to me since I’d been at Norwood helping to care for Jamie after his accident, and there was that odd, quiet moment the other night in the kitchen when he was almost affectionate. 

As my thoughts began to settle I decided not to say anything yet to anyone. Breaking up Chuck and Jamie would be more than a day’s work, I realized, assuming it could be done at all, and Fitz hadn’t actually agreed to join Caroline in her nefarious plot. The best plan for the moment, I concluded, was to try to be more observant and try to figure out where Fitz really stood and what were his real feelings about Jamie and me. Caroline, of course, was a lost cause. It was obvious that the wicked witch of Cleveland wasn’t going to be won over by anything I could do. Fitz would have to be it, and I realized I needed to try to get to know him better, quickly. I’d been hanging back because I found him simultaneously so physically intimidating and yet so freaking hot! I wasn’t hyperventilating around him as I had been when I first saw him at the ball, but I recognized the powerful physical effect he still had on me. Of course, I was also uneasy around him because of what he’d said about me at the ball, along with  his being older, more worldly, and, of course, so staggeringly wealthy and powerful. Although, with the exception of that ungentlemanly lapse at the ball, I had to admit he’d been perfectly normal and unassuming in his interactions with Jamie and me. I realized I needed a deeper understanding of Fitz than I’d gotten from superficial first impressions. Time for me to get to work!

Dinner felt fraught. Chuck and Jamie’s morning “massage” session had a positive effect on Jamie — with the help of crutches and the mansion elevator he was able to hobble into the dining room and join the rest of us for the first time since he’d racked up his ankle. That put the kibosh on Caroline’s designs of pushing her plan with Fitz and Chuck at the dinner table, even though she kept trying to dart meaningful glances at Fitz while dropping venomous barbs about how boring and insipid everything is in Hartfield County. 

“Bitch,” I thought to myself, “if you can’t stand it here nothing’s keeping you from hopping on your broomstick and flying home to Cleveland!” 

I had positioned myself across the table from Fitz to observe and speak with him better. It felt awkward, trying not to stare at him in all his hulking hotness while trying to act perfectly normal. “If I can pull this off,” I thought, “there’d better be a Tony Award category for this performance!”  It was a challenge, though. Tonight Fitz looked irresistibly handsome in a teal polo shirt that seemed to have been sprayed on, emphasizing his incredibly wide shoulders and his bulging biceps and pecs. “I wonder where someone his size buys clothes?” I found myself wondering. 

Focus, Izzy! Focus! I’m supposed to be observing Fitz and getting better acquainted, not drooling over him! Oh. Yes. Observing. Well, I did observe that Fitz didn’t seem to be responding to Caroline’s barbs, so that was a relief. On the other hand, I thought I caught him looking at me closely a couple of times when he thought I wasn’t aware. Was I imagining things? 

So far I’d been pretty quiet, but I realized I needed to take the bit between my teeth. I wasn’t going to learn more about Fitz by being quiet. “Fitz,” I heard myself saying, “if you don’t mind my asking, how did you and Chuck become friends?” 

Fitz looked slightly surprised that the country mouse had finally spoken, but he smiled as he answered. “We met at boarding school. Chuck and I are the same age, even though most people think I’m older than he is. Our families sent us to St. Mark’s School up in New Hampshire and the school, in its infinite wisdom, put us together as roommates. I suppose they thought it made sense to pair up the kids in our class from the two wealthiest families. But it turned out we had a lot more than wealthy families   in common. We both were into athletics, too, and we both realized we’re gay our sophomore year. That certainly bonded us together! St. Mark’s is an Episcopalian school and pretty enlightened, but it’s still a high school with a lot of other adolescent guys with raging hormones discovering their own sexualities, so it wasn’t always easy. It’s also not a very large school, so there were only a couple of other gay guys in our class and we were a pretty tight-knit little group. By graduation Chuck and I both had been accepted at Yale, so we ended up rooming together there, too. We also both lost our parents before we graduated and we each came into our inheritances as soon as we were adults at age 18. So we both had a ton of learning to do about how to manage everything while still trying to get through school and university, and we’ve depended a lot on each other to try to figure it all out. That’s more or less the nutshell version.”

“Wow! I’m so sorry to learn about your parents. That’s got to have been really rough to go through! I can’t imagine losing my own, even if there are times they drive me completely crazy.”

“Thanks, Izzy,” said Fitz, quietly. “There have been some hard moments, for sure. Chuck at least has sisters near his own age, but I’ve only got my much younger sister Gloria. She’s just fifteen now. The same age as your twin sisters, I think? I’m Glory’s legal guardian, so that’s another complication. She’s actually a sweet kid, but we have the occasional dustups just as if I were her parent. She’s at boarding school in Maryland, so at least there are other people supervising her besides me, and she has company there from her schoolmates. I think it would be pretty hard and lonely to grow up at home at Pemberton without other kids her age around. It was for me until I went off to St. Mark’s and met that handsome knucklehead over there,” he said, gesturing towards Chuck.

“That’s a lot of responsibility to have thrust on you when you’re just, what, twenty three?” I said. “I’m impressed. I’m not sure I could do that. But you seem to be handling it pretty well.”

“I’m not complaining. Life sometimes comes at you full blast, no matter who or how old you are, or your circumstances. I was lucky to have a friend like Chuck to count on. I know some people think he’s kind of a lightweight because he’s so much more social and outgoing than I am, but that would be a mistake. He may not be what you’d call a really deep thinker about a lot of things, but Chuck is entirely sensible and rock solid. And a real sweetheart. Not like morose old me!”

“I think you’re maybe selling yourself short,” I said. “You’re more quiet and reserved than Chuck, but I haven’t seen anything morose about you. And Chuck obviously thinks the world of you, and that’s not a small thing. Your friendship speaks well for both of you.”

Fitz seemed to color slightly and, for a moment, I thought his dark eyes had become a bit watery. It suddenly occurred to me that he might not be accustomed to genuine compliments. For someone his age he was clearly juggling a lot of difficult things, and doing it pretty well. Yet I doubt that anyone ever took the time to tell him that. 

Dinner was finished and we began moving into the living room. Jamie looked tired and uncomfortable hobbling on the crutches. “Guys, I’m starting to feel like it’s been a long day for me. I’m going back upstairs. Thanks for the company and everything y’all have done for me. I should feel better tomorrow. See y’all then.” Chuck and I accompanied Jamie to his room. It was soon apparent to me that, even though he was tired, he needed less assistance than on previous nights. 

“Izzy, go back downstairs and be sociable,” Chuck said. “I can give Jamie a hand with anything he needs and I’ll stay until he’s ready to sleep.” 

“OK. Good night, guys. See you in the morning, then,” I replied. I went back down to the living room where I hoped I wouldn’t find myself having to deal with the scheming Caroline. Fortunately, it seemed that she was going to leave Fitz in peace for the evening. She was sitting near the windows immersed in an issue of Italian Vogue. Fitz was sitting some distance away, sending a DM or text message. When I sat down near him he looked up and said “I’m messaging my sister, Glory. I do just about every night. There’s a big age difference, I know, but we’re all we’ve got, and she’s a good kid.” 

Fitz spent the next few minutes texting with his little sister. When that was wrapped up he looked up at me. There seemed to be a different, softer expression on his face. “Thanks again for what you said at the dinner table, Izzy. It was really kind of you to say that.” 

I must have looked a bit surprised. “Well, I meant it, Fitz. I didn’t realize everything you’ve gone through and how much responsibility has been put on your shoulders so early in life. Fortunately, those are some shoulders you’ve got! I’m sure they can support a lot!” I grinned at him, although concerned that maybe it sounded too flirtatious.

Fitz seem to color slightly, again, and then for a moment flashed a sappy grin. “Actually, you’ve reminded me I haven’t worked out for a couple of days. These shoulders are going to get pretty saggy if I don’t pay them some attention. Do you work out, Izzy?” 

“Only a little,” I confessed. “Nothing like what I imagine you must do. I’m just trying to stay fit and a bit defined. So mainly stretching and cardio and some light weights. I’m only 5’4”, so I don’t want to end up looking like a little musclebound fire hydrant!”

“Would you feel like joining me? I’m not sure if you were aware, there’s a pretty good gym in one of the outbuildings. It even has a jacuzzi and sauna for afterwards.”

Whoa! An opportunity to see this Superman look-alike in the jacuzzi or sauna! Be still my heart!

“Um, sure. I knew there was a gym because I was good friends with Geoff Addison, the son of the former owners, and he was a pretty serious jock. But I never actually used the gym with him.” 

“Well, come on, then. Go get your workout clothes and meet me in ten minutes in the foyer.”

I zoomed upstairs to see what I had brought that could be used to work out in. I hadn’t thought about it when I packed to come over to help take care of Jamie, but I found a pair of cut-off sweat pants and a t-shirt that would do. They’d be fine for the relatively light exercising I’d be doing. I changed into them and grabbed a towel and met Fitz downstairs. He was wearing a similar outfit. We headed outside in the mild evening, in the direction of the gym.

“So, tell me more about Izzy,” said Fitz.

“I’m not sure there’s very much to tell. I grew up here, as I think you know. Last year I started college at University of Kentucky, but I decided to take a break from it. Maybe I started school too soon. I enjoyed it, but I was also a little overwhelmed, coming from a small rural high school directly to a huge state university. And I realized I’d have to decide on a major this year and I have no idea what I want to do! I kind of take after my Dad that way. All kinds of things interest me, but so far there isn’t any one thing that stands out above the others.”

“Were there any things that particularly appealed to you?” asked Fitz.

“Yeah. But far too many! I really liked art history, but I also found myself pulled into applied art. I discovered I sketch pretty well, and I enjoy it. But I also enjoyed English and World Lit. And biology. And more. I did well in all those courses, but I haven’t been able to figure out what I want to pursue. I’m afraid I’m kind of a throwback, like my Dad. We’d have done really well in the 18th century, where educated people like Thomas Jefferson could pursue a wide variety of interests, instead of having to specialize in one narrow thing! But I’ll have to decide on something. I’m going to have to earn a living somehow. With five of us there won’t be enough for each of us to live independently if anything happens to Dad. We won’t starve, but we’re all going to have to work at something.”