With a kind of shuddering laugh he collapsed on her breast, humble and abject. "Darling Amanda ... forgive me ... too fast ...." He lifted his head to look into her eyes, but they were closed. Her face wore a look of serenity that he'd never seen there, a look of blissful peace.
He touched his lips to her forehead. "Then it was ... all right ... for you as well?"
A dreamy, languid smile gathered on her face. "It was all right, all right."
"You were so quiet," he said, his breath still a little ragged.
"I guess I'm not a screamer," she whispered, looking at him at last, her cheeks flushing. "Did you really miss the sound effects?" she asked with near perfect seriousness. "I could let loose next time if it's important to you."
He pretended to consider. "Could you give me an example of what I might expect?" he asked politely.
"Sure. How about this?" She took a deep breath and moaned, "Oh more, oh more, oh, oh, more, MORE MORE—"
He covered her mouth with his hand. "On second thought, a picture is worth a thousand words," he said with a tender smile.
"Or I could howl—"
"No."
"I love you, Geoff," she said, her voice suddenly dropping low. "I love you. I love you. I love you. I even love to say I love you."
The tone of her voice took his breath away. Weak with enchantment, he kissed her and held her more closely and said, "Marry me, Amanda. Right away."
"Yes, but—I have another confession to make," she said, and she looked suddenly uneasy. "I may not stay disinherited forever. My father seems, I don't know, kinder lately, or else I never saw it before. What if he and I reconcile completely?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," he said with gentle irony, burying his face in the curve of her neck.
But Amanda persisted. "He tried to comfort me, in his fashion, after Perry was hurt. But I wouldn't let him. I don't know why. I guess I still resented his ambition. He never seemed to have time for me before, and you already know that I blamed him for Uncle Mac's death," she added sheepishly. Then she stopped herself. "Why am I telling you all of this now?" she wailed.
"So that you can put it behind you, love," he murmured, and he pulled up the blanket over them both, determined this time not to rush her into making love again until she had finished facing down her own demons, just as he had done.
"It's just that whatever we did—any of us, even Mother—Dad would always say, 'Not good enough. Try harder.' Well, for instance, Mother took up needlepoint, and she loved it. She decided to make a kind of sampler: 'Home, sweet sweet home.' It showed a cottage and a picket fence, and a little squirrel that she couldn't get right, so she pulled it out and did it over and over. 'It looks too square,' she'd say. Or, 'The tail's too thin.' But she couldn't win: every evening Dad would come in and say, 'How much did you get done today?' He was turning her sofa into a sweatshop, treating her sampler like piecework. When she finally got the squirrel right he only said, 'You took long enough.' The next day she put it down and never picked it up again. It's a trivial thing, I know, but that's how he wore you down, on the little stuff. My mother is very stubborn, deep inside. Now she doesn't do very much at all; she just hides in her fantasy world all day. I resented Dad for that. A lot."
"Did you ever tell him?" Geoff asked quietly.
"No; how could I? He'd never understand. That's what I liked to think, at least. Now I'm not so sure."
Her grimace dissolved into a sad and pensive look. "You see, after the bombing, when my uncle barred me from seeing Perry in the hospital? I think even Dad was shocked by that. He came to see me in my studio … but I was distraught. He said all the right things, and I said all the wrong ones. He went away angry, and I think very sad. I don't think he's even told my mother that he went. For the past couple of days I've been thinking ... that he must have felt exactly the way I did when his brother shut me out from the hospital: helpless, frustrated, horribly misunderstood. Stupid, isn't it? So much love around us ... and yet we spurn it, for no good reason. We just don't listen," she said, sighing heavily.
After a long pause she whispered, "Poor, poor little Perry ... he couldn't even have heard—"
"Shh. That bridge, too, will be crossed," Geoff said quietly, stroking her hair, soothing her, dropping soft little kisses on her brow. He knew that Amanda still had to let go completely over her cherished nephew; she'd held it all in for many days, and he could see that the moment of release was near. The tears would hurt, they would sting; but they would wash her soul clean of guilt that did not belong there. Amanda Fain had run away to the mountains so that she could listen in peace to the sound of her heart. By the time she came down from them she would be far more wise, far more loving. And Geoff, filled with wonder and a wild desire, would be right there, at her side.
Chapter 14
The ride back to Connecticut might just as well have been on a magic carpet. Geoff never afterward could recall actually sitting behind the wheel and driving the car. His foot must have been on the gas most of the time and the brake some of the time. He must have hung his arm out the window every once in a while, signaling either a right or left turn. He was pretty sure he drove on the right side of the road—although again, he had no real memory of it.
What he remembered in the years after that fateful interlude in the Adirondack mountains was the sheer joy of non-stop talking and listening to Amanda. Speech simply tumbled out of them, with each of them interrupting the other and finishing sentences for the other; with both of them laughing at all they had in common—and all that they didn't; and most of all, with both of them marveling that they could come up with so many words and sentences in a row without any of them being hostile.
It was a miracle, pure and simple.
By the time they drove up to the grand and stately manor that Jim Fain wore proudly as a badge of his success in life, Amanda had pretty much forgotten that she had resented it as thoroughly as the man who'd had it built.
Because that was the old Amanda. The new one tripped lightly up the stone stairs to her anxious waiting parents, hugged her mother, poked her brother, and said to her father, "Geoff's my fiancé now, so be nice to him."
"Oh, well, that—what?"
"We're getting married in a month. First in England and then again here."
"Mandy!" cried her mother, bursting instantly into tears. "Oh, honey, that is such wonderful news. You and Geoff? You and Geoff? I can't believe it!"
"Neither can I, Mrs. Fain; I'm a lucky man," Geoff said between bear hugs from her.
David just shook his head and said, "Never saw it coming," but there was a hint of a smile on his face. Maybe he was just glad that Amanda was going to torture someone else for a change. He shook Geoff's hand and said, "Seriously, man, welcome to the family." He turned almost shyly away and wandered off.
While Amanda and her mother went inside arm-in-arm, discussing young Perry's improved condition and possible wedding dates, Jim Fain buttonholed Geoff just outside the grand entry hall. The hanging outdoor fixture high above their heads cast a benign and golden light over them, but even so, Geoff could see that the past weeks had been hard on Jim Fain. He looked older now, more weary now, as if he'd discovered that life's possibilities were not in fact endless.
"Needless to say, Geoff, you can come back to the shipyard."
"Nowhere else I'd rather be, sir."
"On trial, mind. But I think you've got the right stuff. We'll see." He pulled out two cigars from his inside jacket pocket and offered one to Geoff, then lit his own. "Let's walk; I need a minute to chew on this news."
They sauntered in the dark around the side of the house and to a manicured lawn that drifted down to the Sound. A dock jutted out, its lights probably annoying the neighbors. A sleek commuter yacht, all gleaming varnish and polished brass, lay tied up alongside. The night was still, the water smooth. All in all, Geoff preferred the water scene before him to the one of sprawling English countryside back home, especially with the new,
grotesque manor being built within view of his ancestral digs.
"This is nice," he said with quiet admiration.
"I like it here," Jim Fain allowed. "The missus, well, she prefers the City. She don't drive, y'see. Eventually we'll move there—when we're old—but for now, Westport is nicely positioned between my brokerage offices and the shipyard. Now. Let's talk business."
Geoff thought Fain was going to discuss wages, but instead he said, "Mandy has managed to get herself estranged from some of the family, I'm sure you know, and I did count myself among 'em. Dave and his shenanigans are one thing, but this Bolshie business—well, you see how it ended up. She may be sorry now, but did she listen to me then? You saw how well. Maybe you'll have more luck with her. I'm counting on you to be a calming influence."
He took a long drag on his cigar and blew it toward the Sound. "God. Artists. Where she got that temperament, I cannot tell you. It's as if we dragged her out from under some cabbage leaf."
Geoff felt bound to defend the woman he loved. "She's done a lot of growing up since the tragedy; she's not the Amanda I left behind me for England."
"And that's another thing. England. I don't want you hauling her off to the motherland, nor any future grandchildren along with her. I want you here, right in these United States of America, and within spitting distance of the shipyard. Promise me that."
"That's my intention, sir."
"Ha. Well. I guess I can't ask for more than that. And another thing: money. Amanda may or may not have it from me. We'll see. Any grandchildren will of course be provided for. But if you're counting on an inheritance—"
"Nothing could be further from my mind."
"Good. Let's see what you're both made of. As I say: on trial."
"Got it."
"Good." Apparently relieved, Fain blew a perfectly round smoke ring on the next exhale, framing the scene before him. His brows drew down as he mulled over the situation. And then he laughed out loud, a good-natured guffah that carried down to the water and into the night. "Well, well. If this don't beat all. You and our Amanda. By God."
Afterword
This is the end of Amanda's book, but not of her story. The reader will learn more about how she and Geoff fared in life through other characters in Book Three ("Laura") and Book Four ("The Heirs") of BY THE SEA.
More for your eReader by Antoinette
Coming in October, 2013:
BY THE SEA, Book Four: THE HEIRS
"A quality novel [that] contains many of those little epiphanies, those moments of recognition."
—Providence Journal
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Select here to read an excerpt from BY THE SEA, Book Four: THE HEIRS.
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About the Author
By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda Page 15