An Obstinate Headstrong Girl. Abigail Bok
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weeks.”
It was not to be supposed that Mr. Bennet would readily accede to such a scheme, based as it was on thoroughly misguided assumptions and involving so much inconvenience to himself. Yet he found most of his family arrayed against him. Lizzy had to go; John would prefer to be where Lizzy was; Kitty was wild to meet a whole new set of flyboys; and Mrs. Bennet could not be persuaded that where she lived had nothing to do with the final disposition of Aunt Evelyn’s estate.
Of the whole family, only Mary raised any objection: California to her meant Hollywood, a cesspit of godless liberals who were all very much better looking than she ever would be. She paid as little heed to the representations of her elder siblings, that the Santa Ynez Valley was hundreds of miles from this Babylon and worlds away in lifestyle and worldview, as they paid to her sermonizing on the subject. Lydon and Jenny thought California had to be an improvement over Columbus in January, and they might as well be there as not, especially if it meant skirting the wrath of General Hughes. It rapidly became a matter not of whether the move was to be made, but of how it was to be accomplished in time.
Mrs. Bennet was principally concerned with which items of furniture would make the best impression in California; Mary, outnumbered, retired into her tracts for fortification against the inevitable onslaught of vice. To Kitty, Lydon, and Jenny, imminent departure meant that every drop of pleasure must be squeezed from their friends at the base, so they were not often to be found at home. Thus it fell to John and Elizabeth to corner their father and overcome his resistance to engagement with economic realities. He was reluctant to look beyond the tender packing of his precious library, but their united tact and persistence prevailed, and he was convinced at last that the most prudent course would be to lease the family home for a year under the supervision of a property management company and to rent a house in Lambtown for a similar period.
John gave notice at Starbucks and Lizzy notified all her landscape business clients, and they were left only, in the brief moments each night before exhaustion claimed them from their labors of the day, to reflect with a degree of chagrin on the shallowness of the roots that bound them to their hometown. Family members were cajoled and coerced into packing all but the last-minute necessities, and Lizzy’s gardening crew was pressed into off-season duty painting and sprucing up the shabby rooms.
In the end, Mrs. Bennet was pleasantly surprised by the ease with which the management company found a professional couple eager to pay a premium rent for an address with such cachet, and she felt confident that she was well on her way to becoming the toast of Lambtown society.
In vain did John, after some painstaking research on the Web, caution his mother that California’s real estate market was not the same as Ohio’s. “Oh, don’t be silly!” cried Mrs. Bennet; “Lambtown is no more than a village compared to Columbus! You can’t ask big-city prices in the middle of nowhere.”
“Perhaps not,” said John, “but by the same token, there are many fewer places available for rent, so the prices are not held in check by competition. And houses in general there seem to be not as large as in this neighborhood. We should consider ourselves lucky if we’re able to find anything big enough for all of us.”
“There’s no chance I’ll share a bedroom with Kitty, if that’s what you’re hinting at,” said Mary. “I won’t have her crashing around at all hours of the night, and playing that dirty music all day!”
Kitty jumped up to demonstrate her mastery of the latest moves to grace the hip-hop chart toppers on MTV, while Lydon and Jenny laughed uproariously at the outrage on Mary’s face.
John smiled, but pointed out that country-western dance styles might fit in better in Lambtown, where ranchers had been the leaders of society for a hundred years. “Perhaps we shouldn’t set our sights on becoming the toast of the town, Mother,” he suggested, “but instead settle for showing ourselves pleased with the company we find ourselves in.”
Mrs. Bennet bristled at his implication. “I’m sure my children are good enough for any company! If you and Lizzy weren’t so high and mighty, you’d have as many friends as Lydon and Kitty do. Young people who know how to have a good time will be welcome anywhere.”
“I expect so,” said John amiably, and continued packing the china.
Chapter Four
In the end, the Bennets kept the brigadier general’s moving vans waiting no more than half a day before they were ready to set off, on a frozen but sunny afternoon in the last week of January. Lizzy had sold her battered work van, so the family squeezed into two cars for the journey—Mrs. Bennet’s more eye-catching than practical Chrysler and the Rabbit General Hughes had bestowed on his daughter in honor of her sixteenth birthday.
As Lizzy and John did most of the driving, they saw little of each other during the four-day trek, beyond adjudicating the family quarrels that inevitably erupted at shared diner meals each evening, or seizing a few moments before breakfast to consult on which route would be most likely to steer them away from severe winter weather. Eventually they detoured south to Arizona to avoid the treacherous passes of the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. Keeping well south of the fleshpots of Las Vegas, they hurried across the Southern California deserts and navigated the traffic of Los Angeles to reach the Pacific Ocean at Ventura on the second day of February.
Here Lydon took the wheel of his wife’s car, so Lizzy joined her parents, John, and Mary for the final leg of the journey. A hazy sunshine warmed the coastline, and only the contrails of high-flying jets disturbed the azure of the sky. It was so warm that they were able to open the windows to enjoy the soft ocean breezes in their shirtsleeves. Mrs. Bennet was voluble in her praise of all she saw: the beachside mansions, the green hillsides, the red tile roofs of Santa Barbara, the flowers blooming on the freeway medians, all spoke to her of the new life of wealth and ease that lay within her grasp.
Lizzy took delight in pointing out to John the drama of the scenery that unfolded once they turned off the main highway. The wild peaks of Los Padres National Forest looming over Lake Cachuma were as impressive as they had seemed in her childhood, and lovelier even than her memory of them, seen now for the first time in the lush green of the rainy season, the easternmost peaks capped with snow. As they drifted down into the heart of the Santa Ynez Valley her heart became too full for speech. She was seeing it all through her aunt’s eyes and thinking of what she had gained and lost from Evelyn Bennet’s life and passing.
When they left the road at the Lambtown exit, Mrs. Bennet looked askance at the rows of dilapidated mobile homes squatting under bare-branched cottonwoods by the offramp. But she scarcely had time to exclaim, “This can’t possibly be Lambtown! Evelyn would never live in a place like this!” before the road had swept around a bend and they found themselves in a spruce village of Queen Anne structures and commodious ranch houses. The center of town, swiftly attained, consisted of cheerfully painted century-old buildings whose signs proclaimed them to be wine tasting rooms, art galleries, cafés, and boutiques.
As much as Mrs. Bennet was relieved, Lizzy was dismayed: such tourist-friendly trappings must be the development of the past few years, for they formed no part of her memory of the place. From her youthful visits she recalled a sleepy town with old-fashioned, practical shops catering mostly to ranching families, and while Aunt Evelyn had mentioned changes, she had touched on them only lightly and with her customary mix of philosophy and humor. Still, it was Lambtown, and Lizzy was happy to be back.
They found a motel on the dusty edge of town, overlooking a wide pasture, and gratified the manager by booking nearly half the rooms for an indefinite period of time. John and Lizzy left Lydon and Jenny exploring the HBO channels and Mary the Gideon Bible while they sallied forth to stretch their legs in a walk through the town before dinner.
The winter dusk was falling and the air was rapidly turning pleasantly chilly as they peered into the windows of the closing shops. A sizable cluster of people, gathered on the corners of a cross street up ahead, caught their attention, so they strolled over to see what was afoot. On closer inspection, the crowd proved to be groups of families lining the sidewalks, most dressed in the day’s work clothes but some in Sunday finery, even a few