Read The Jane Austen Book Club for Free Online Page A

out.
    The other women were outraged on her behalf. She’d been raped, some of them argued. It was a shame no charges had been pressed.
    A shame. After the initial relief, now that the story existed in the open air and could be looked at, what Jocelyn noticed most was how unresisting she’d been. She saw, as if from above, her own inert body in the strapless dress and thin cardigan, reclining on the lounge chair. The suggestion that Bryan should have been made to face some consequences came at her like an accusation. She should have done something. Why hadn’t she put up a fight? The whole time Bryan was fingering her, she was still hoping to win his good opinion!
    No one else blamed her. Culturally programmed passivity, they said. The fairy-tale-princess imperative. But Jocelyn grew more and more humiliated. There were two women in the group who really had been raped, one of them by her own husband and repeatedly. Jocelyn felt she’d made a big deal over nothing. With her silence, she’d given Bryan a power he didn’t deserve. She wasn’t about to let some frat-boy asshole have a thing to say about who she was.
    Who was she?
    â€œWhat’s wrong with me?” she asked Sylvia later. It wasn’t a question for the group. “The simplest thing. Falling in love. Falling. Why can’t I do that?”
    â€œYou love dogs.”
    Jocelyn waved that angrily away. “It doesn’t count. That’s too easy. Hitler did that.”
    She didn’t go back to a fourth evening. Raising her consciousness had turned out to be one more thing that left her feeling ashamed, and she was done with feeling ashamed.
    Daniel became a lobbyist in Sacramento, for an Indian tribe, a wild-river group, and the Japanese government. He was urged, from time to time, to run for office, but this was easily resisted. Politics, he said, was a foot-to-mouth occupation. Sylvia worked at the state library, in the California History Room. Jocelyn managed accounts at a small vineyard; her own dog kennel was still some years in her future and would never provide for her complete support. Pridey lived to be sixteen, and his last day on earth, it was Sylvia and Daniel who took off work to drive him to the vet with Jocelyn. They sat with her on the speck of grass outside the office, where Jocelyn held him while he died. Then they all sat in the car together. No one was able to stop crying long enough to see the road home.
    H ow are you doing?” Jocelyn asked Sylvia. They had one minute alone together in the kitchen and a hundred things to say that could not be said in front of Allegra. Allegra was Daniel’s darling, his only daughter, and though she’d immediately taken her mother’s side and stuck there, it was unnatural and made us all sad.
    The kitchen was, of course, beautifully done, with counters of blue and white tile, brass fixtures, and an antique stove. Sahara sat by the sink, turned to show her fine African profile. After everyone had gone and there was no one to see, Sahara would be given the plates to lick, but this was a secret and Sahara could keep a secret.
    Jocelyn was rinsing the glasses. The water in town was so hard that they got scratched if they were put in the dishwasher, and therefore had to be done by hand.
    â€œDead woman walking,” Sylvia said. “You know how Daniel used to drive me crazy? It turns out I was very happily married. For thirty-two years. I miss him like my heart has been torn from my chest. What are the odds?”
    Jocelyn put down a glass and took Sylvia’s cold hands in her own slippery, soapy ones. “I’ve been very happily unmarried all those same years. Everything is going to be all right.” It was occurring to her for the first time that she was losing Daniel, too. She’d handed him over, but she’d never given him up. Now, while she was breeding her dogs and dusting her lightbulbs and reading her books, he had packed his