Crazy in Love - Softcover

Rice, Luanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044921754X ISBN 13: 9780449217542

Verlag: Crest, 1989

Inhaltsangabe

Wick, an up-and-coming Wall Street lawyer, and Georgianna, a brilliant one-woman think tank, are involved in a fiercely passionate love that becomes threatened by imminent drastic change

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Luanne Rice is the author of twenty-one novels, including Sandcastles, Summer of Roses, Summer’s Child, Silver Bells, Beach Girls, and Dance With Me. She lives in New York City and Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1


MY HUSBAND, NICK SYMONDS, COMMUTED to work in a seaplane. This was unusual, of great interest to people who lived in our small town on Connecticut's shore and to the people we met at parties in New York. They loved to hear about how he and three other Wall Street lawyers, all of whom had pilots' licenses and lived in Black Hall, beyond reasonable commuting distance to New York, had bought and refurbished a third-hand seaplane for less money than it would cost to buy a new station wagon. Only during bad weather and when the bay iced over did they drive into the city. Still, I considered the seaplane an ominous portent. It symbolized the extremes to which Nick would go for Wall Street. The trouble was, we loved each other madly, but the Street was stealing him from me.

It was early May; the leaves were out. I stood on the wide porch watching Nick go through his briefcase. Every morning he inventoried its contents. I stared at his wavy hair, wild in the wind. I saw the scene as a tableau, as an outsider would see it. My black hair and white nightgown were whipping behind me as if I were a heroine about to be left. I wanted to pull him inside, take off his dark topcoat, have him with me all day. We could go back to bed for an hour, eat a big breakfast, fish for snapper blues, ride bikes along the Shore Road.

"Baby, don't go," I said. I always called him "baby" when I wanted to make light of something I felt murderously strong about.

He stood and hugged me close, and then I pulled back so I could see his eyes. They were black, nearly purple like India ink. They held my gaze for a while, but then I heard the plane taxiing across the choppy bay.

"Why don't you drive today?" I asked. "It's too windy to fly." The Tobins' flag was snapping like gunfire.

"There's not time now, Georgie," he said. He sounded a little sad; lately I had become more anxious about his flying. I could hear the voice of a Coast Guard commander: "We're sorry, madam, the plane and all passengers were lost."

"I have to go," he said. He kissed me and ran for the plane. Nick was tall; his strides were long. His black coat flapped in the wind. For a few steps he ran backwards, waving at me. I watched him climb into the rear seat behind my brother-in-law, Donald Macken. How incongruous it looked, that shabby yellow plane full of pristine lawyers! I could see them only from the chest up, wearing identical dark coats, white shirts, dark ties. Nick was identical to no one; he only dressed that way. The plane taxied into the Sound, gaining speed as it bounced across the waves, then took off. It circled once over the pine trees, casting a black shadow on the bay. Then I did what I always did when Nick flew in windy weather: I walked next door to visit my mother.


PEM, MY GRANDMOTHER, stood at the kitchen door. "You ought to cover yourself up," she said, holding the cuff of my nightgown between her thumb and forefinger. I kissed the top of her head. She had once been five feet six, my height, but she had shrunk to five one and developed a humpback. She was eighty-six. Her white hair was sparse and wild, her nose prominent. She resembled Einstein.

"No one saw me," I said.

"Those birds in the plane did."

"True, but one of them is Nick and one of them is Donald."

"Who are they?"

"Your grandsons-in-law."

"My granddaughters are married?"

For eight years, I was about to answer, but then my mother called from the living room. She sat in a wicker chair, wrapped in a red plaid blanket, a tiny portable radio on the table beside her. She had a famous smile, wide and radiant and nearly square, but her expression was pained that morning. For effect, she swept back her thick shoulder-length chestnut hair with one hand and held it there. "A winter sea in May," she said.

"It's not that bad," I said, feeling vaguely angry that she should bring up the subject so abruptly, as if I wouldn't be worrying myself.

"I don't think those guys should be flying at all," she said. "No jobs are worth risking their lives in that plane. I have to say, Georgie, that you and Clare should tell them what's what. The plane is a rattletrap, winds on the Sound are fluky . . ."

"You're not helping, Mom."

"Another thing--remember the hurricane season begins in June."

I thought, not for the first time, of how incredulous her audience would have been to know that Honora Swift, the woman they had watched nightly as Channel 6's weather forecaster and Saturday mornings as Weather Woman, placed weather at the head of her ever-changing list of One Hundred Things to Fear Most. This list included the dangers of walking barefoot on the beach at night, the dangers of pigeons, the dangers of cans left too long in the refrigerator.

Clare walked in, followed by her two sons and Pem. "You know what Mom did?" Clare asked, kissing my mother, then me. "She called before dawn to tell us the wind speed and wave heights."

"I wish they hadn't flown," I said, hating to admit it in front of Honora. Clare smirked, slipping off her down parka. Casey came to sit on my lap and Eugene pressed my nose hard. "Ouch," I said, and did it back to him.

"Hey, hey," Pem said, laughing.

"I'm not saying the wind is actually dangerous today, but it's important to be aware. You girls of all people should know how dangerous weather can be." She was referring to our father, who had died on a North Sea oil rig in Force 10 weather.

"I think that's a really mean thing to bring up," Clare said.

"Your father was a scientist--he knew the dangers. My God, they had been predicting that storm all week. But those precious bottom samples were so important, so almighty important to him. Just like
Wall Street for Nicky and Don."

"Shut up, Mama, and eat your peanuts," Pem said, a bland expression on her face.

Honora looked at her with hurt eyes while Clare and I tried not to laugh. "That is a very vulgar saying," Honora said.

Ignoring her, Pem spoke to Eugene. "It's an old Irish saying. My mother used to say it to her mother."

"Your mother was English and she was lovely," Honora said. "My grandma would never say anything like that. Mrs. Dawkins told us that story, it was about a bridal shower where the mother kept mentioning the girl's old flame, over and over again, until the girl finally said, 'Shut up, Mama, and eat your peanuts.' "

Put out, Pem watched Honora across the heads of her great-grandsons. She stuck out her tongue. Still wounded by the story, my mother looked away. "Do you believe my mother is making faces at me? Who would believe the dignified matriarch makes faces at her daughter? Two days ago the librarian called her 'the grande dame of Bennison Point.' "

Our great-aunts had told us that Pem had been a hellion as a child, but none of us had really believed it until she had started to get senile nine years ago. The white-haired matriarch became a naughty girl. She would start boxing matches. She would say "Oh, I'll smash you," and mean it, if she didn't get her way. Having always admired the color pink, she one day dyed the living room's predominantly ecru chintz curtains and slipcovers damask rose. Then she dipped the sponge mop in a bucket of leftover dye and pinkened the white patches on the hooked rugs. She had always loved our family, but now she loved us exclusively, if pugilistically. In public she became overly polite, as if she knew that once her guard dropped the antics would start. She...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Crest
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1989
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 044921754X
• ISBN 13: 9780449217542
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar