Page 86 of Purchase Power
She almost longed for that false sense of security in Gabriel Manor.
She worried most for her sister, who was still attending classes and coming home with more stories about what happened beyond their campus.“A bunch of the exchange students in Asia had to come back. They were stuck in quarantine for days before being allowed to come back to campus…”
Lucy stayed home, not that she wanted to go out. She wanted to stare down her laptop screen and figure out what the fuck to do.
What was she feeling? What did she want to tell the world about her experience?
She looked back at her notes from the beginning of her misadventure. Everything sounded so twee now. Exposing old sick fucks for who they were? Musing on what it meant to be a high-class escort in today’s age? The state of womanhood in the 21stcentury? Lucy couldn’t imagine writing about any of that, and she chastised the older, more naïve “her” that dared to think things would be as simple as that.
If I could tell the world one thing about Mr. Rochester, what would it be?
She picked up her old, worn copy ofJane Eyre.Far from a first edition, its binding was ragged and the pages dogeared. When she read it in college, she underlined and highlighted certain parts that inspired her.Inspiration… what’s that now?
Whenever she wanted food for thought, she turned to the final chapter, where pious Jane revealed it was ten years into the future, and everything that should have been, became. Lucy always found the part about Adele the most interesting, and had written an entire paper about the line,“…a sound English education corrected in a great measure her French defects.”Adele was saved from her French mother’s tragic flaws so commonly associated with foreigners during the time, that she was now featured in Jane’s happy ending.You’re trapped in your own world, Jane. Get out of your damn head.Lucy was the first to be critical of her favorite literary heroine, but even that thought surprised her. Jane was someone she saw as a potential friend. The one who drives you crazy because she’s so stuck in her ways, but because of her pure heart, you know she will always be there for you. Loyal to a fault. Even if such people did not deserve her loyalty.
Lucy always wanted a daughter named Jane. Or Adele. Never Bertha. Had she, too, fallen prey to the lessons a Victorian lady like Charlotte Brontë wrote into her novel back then?
Jane Craig.Back before she ever thought of herself with a different last name, that was how Lucy envisioned her future daughter.Adele Jane Craig.Now, however, she tortured herself with thoughts like,Adele Gabriel. Adele Bertha Gabriel.
Bertha Gabriel.
Who was Stacey?
Lucy turned to her laptop, the thoughts flowing through her one sentence at a time.
“I am nothing like Jane Eyre, who may have sold her services to the highest bidder, but they were far from impure. Unlike me. I didn’t have to, but for the dumbest reasons imaginable, I thought it a grand idea to play the role of an escort to get a story. That very line makes me ashamed now. It’s not a role you can play. I have great respect for the women who make this their long-term job, whether out of necessity or opportunity. I don’t think I could ever do it again, but that is my privilege to walk away. Unlike Jane, who was trapped in whatever world the “highest bidder” drew her into.
I suppose I am like Jane, though. I fell in love with my Mr. Rochester, right there in Thornfield Hall. There was even an Alice.
There was even a Bertha.”
Lucy kept typing. She didn’t know what she would do with this article when the time came to submit it somewhere, but she knew her truth must be spoken. She must purge every thought, every feeling building within her and send it out into the world, as if every person in humanity cried to hear her sweet little thoughts about what it meant to be a naïve girl in love with the worst man imaginable.
Because, even now as she wrote about the horrible realizations she came to in the past few days, she admitted that she had fallen in love with Noah Gabriel. A sin she would pay dearly for in the weeks and years to come.
