Leon Uris (32 page)

“Wouldn’t that be lovely,” she said.

Glen had nice experienced touches. Her arms went about his neck and she drew him down on the blanket. They kissed and kissed again. Amanda turned again to her tummy and uttered a contented “ummm.”

Glen traced her open back with his lips. Amanda gasped and grasped the blanket, not out of passion, but to conceal the fact that she felt nothing. She had never felt anything for him, from him. Could this ever change?

“Happy?” Glen asked.

“Ummm.”

Dixie Jane gave a shriek of joy and horror as she pulled a huge crab up to the pier on her line.

The two girls lay on Dixie’s bed cattycorner so their feet met in the middle of the mattress and pumped as though they were pedaling a bike. Dixie Jane rendered a nasal imitation of her math tutor. They
pumped feet some more. “We are going sailing on the
Lochinvar
tomorrow with my father and uncles.”

“Oh dear.”

“What?”

“I promised Emily I’d have tea with her,” Dixie Jane said.

“She’ll understand,” Amanda said. “You are very kind to her.”

“We have some nice talks, mostly pretending. Amanda, how did she get that way?”

“Fell out of a swing when she was a little girl. At least that’s what’s been passed down. I’m not certain. She’s just disturbed.”

They pumped their legs clockwise then counterclockwise then clockwise again while they covered a number of subjects.

“Amanda.”

“Yes.”

“Am I going to start having a period soon?”

“Not yet. You’re going to have to show some boobies first.”

“I hope they’re beautiful like yours. My mom’s boobies are beautiful, too, but she ties them all up. I hope Scratchy-beard leaves marks on her.”

“You want to get whacked?”

“And Mother would never talk to me about periods.”

“Your mom’s got to live, Dixie. She’s been hurting for a long time. If you’re not happy about Mr. Dorfman, then your mother can’t be happy, either.”

They stopped pedaling, and as great girlfriends are wont to do, lay on their backs, side by side, staring at the ceiling.

“I would have never learned about periods until it was too late if you hadn’t explained to me why you couldn’t go horseback riding that day at Grandpa’s. Is it a secret you try to keep from your husband?”

“No, but men don’t usually like it and they can make a woman feel guilty.”

“That’s disgusting. When you open your college, are you going to teach girls about periods?”

“They’ll already have them, but perhaps we can teach them why.”

“Excellent,” Dixie said.

In the long silence that followed, Amanda had come to learn that her pal was steaming up to ask a heady question and would probably approach it diagonally.

“If you could make one wish, what would it be?” Dixie asked.

“Well, I have another good girlfriend, Willow, who you haven’t met. We used to lie like this. I would make Willow the first American Negro woman to become a professor.”

“What would she teach?”

“She could teach white girls how to beat their daddies at checkers.”

“I can already do that.”

“She’d teach law. Willow Fancy, doctor of law.”

“Do black women have periods?”

“Yep, but Willow won’t be having one for a while, she’s expecting a baby anytime.”

“Do you miss Willow?”

“Yes.”

“She can’t come up to Newport, can she?”

Amanda propped up on an elbow and gave Dixie a tickle. “Miss Dixie, you started all this because if I told you my wish, then I would have to ask you what your wish would be.”

Caught. Amanda always knows what I’m thinking.

“So, what is your wish?”

“I wish you loved my daddy more.”

“We have not been seeing each other for all that long. It can take two people time to feel strongly enough to make a lifetime decision,” Amanda answered, knowing that the girl’s keen mind was interpreting her tone of voice. “I care for your father very much and I want it to grow. What makes you think I don’t love him?”

“It’s easy to see when you come into a room.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“If you see me in a room, you always break into a big smile and we always hug. You never smile more than a blink when you see Daddy and you scarcely touch him, maybe let him peck your cheek while you sort of turn your face away and say ‘ummm.’”

Amanda floundered for an answer. “Well, Miss Dixie, your father and I were necking on the beach today.”

“Yes, like I neck with my new puppy.”

Dixie yawned and stretched. Amanda doused the light and adjusted the overhead fan, then lay with her arm about the girl. Amanda wanted to cry out, “I don’t feel anything!”

Dixie finally slept. Amanda got up quickly, not wanting to leave tears on the pillow. She went to an adjoining bedroom and crumpled up on the bed, gritted and gritted until she stopped her tears.

She’d never stop scanning every room she entered for sight of Zach. All summer, everywhere. What if she saw him with a girl on his arm? Was not seeing him better than seeing him with someone else?

There was a stirring and Amanda looked over to the connecting door to see Dixie standing.

“Do you love me?” the girl asked shakily.

“I love you very much, Dixie Jane.”

•
28
•

The gentlemen’s smoking parlor would have made any prince of the desert proud with its Arabic-Ottoman furnishings and hangings and hand-beaten gold and jeweled objects of art and a flow of incense of biblical origin. The floor was covered by a silk carpet, the largest Hede ever imported, with nearly three million knots for every square meter. It was light sand-colored, like the desert, and one could only surmise its value.

This den was a fiercely held male domain that even Josephine respected. On special gatherings, such as Bastille Day or someone’s sixteenth birthday, children, the ladies, and other impostors gained entry. Otherwise nothing ludicrous took place, depending on one’s definition of
ludicrous
. Purple jokes and bawdy boys’ talk for the main but it could get rowdy, George Washington Barjac type of rowdy, and every Protestant kingpin millionaire hungered for an invitation.

Lieutenant O’Hara had not visited Onde la Mer for some time and came this night with Major Boone, almost on orders.

Zachary found himself with a disgusting cigar in his teeth delicately fencing and gracefully losing to Papa George, who, considering his age, was still a fairly decent swordsman.

. . . when Lilly opened the door wide and entered like a waif among the ogres, went directly to Zach, and signaled him to drop his weapon and follow her.

“I am requisitioning the lieutenant,” she said.

“But, Lilly, I am winning,” Papa cried, “and we are about to enjoy some cultural entertainment.”

Lilly stood on tiptoes, kissed her father’s cheek, and said, “Ta-ta, Papa,” and left with her prisoner, passing four turbaned musicians and a lady dancer of note entering.

At the center fountain, Lilly took the cigar from Zach and hissed it out in the water.

“Thanks for that,” Zach said. “I never did get the hang of these things. I must say that these smell better than the ones in my da’s saloon.”

Lilly started to load her cigarette holder, then retreated. “You don’t care for any kind of tobacco, do you?”

“My aunt Brigid smoked a clay pipe. She and my ma both died of consumption. I think Da felt that tobacco had something to do with it. Might have been the only bad habit he didn’t have.”

Zach took her holder, snuffed out her cigarette, and took a deep breath of pure, unfouled air.

“I missed you at our gallery showing. We hung a Turner,” she said.

“I’ve been burning the candle at all four ends,” Zach answered.

“Ben told me how obsessed you are with your work. No matter, I’ll be happy to give you a personal tour.”

Music whined Oriental from the parlor along with the crisp crackles of finger clappers.

“Fatima,” Lilly said. “I’ve seen her dance. A dozen years ago I
was a fairly decent belly dancer, for special occasions. Would you see me to my villa gate?”

“Love to.”

All spokes led out to the bluff walk, where the sounds of the sea, Onde la Mer, took over. They walked until they were out of the light to a place of dancing flames between two torchlights.

“Are you playing some kind of bourgeois game with me? By
bourgeois
I mean—”

“I know what
bourgeois
means,” Zach said.

“You do? I’m intrigued. How?”

“Victor Hugo,” he said, and kissed her well, pulling her toward him very slightly to see if her body was part of her kiss. She came to him liltingly. Lilly handled it easily and Zach felt some of his own sorrows leaving him. He tugged her toward him again, but she put her hand on his chest.

“We’d better have a chat,” she said, leading him to a bench. “That was very pleasant, but I have a feeling you have absented yourself because you have a feeling I was leading you on.”

“That’s what I think. You were leading me on,” he said.

Watch this young man, Lilly, she told herself. He doesn’t minuet. He polkas.

“Paris invented flirtation, I think. It comes naturally, rather expected. The problem with flirting is that it always has a tinge of naughtiness to it. If I overstepped, I’m sorry. It is just the vanity of an old girl in need of a little flirt.”

“You’re not an old girl and you’re very beautiful.”

“I should be,” she answered. “I spend enough time before the mirror every day troweling my beauty on.”

Zach took her hand, kissed it, and gave it back to her.

“Come on, Lieutenant, you know you can have any girl in Newport.”

“Their fathers are all lay preachers with shotguns. Washington and Newport are both fine places, but that’s not why I joined the Corps. I’m almost embarrassed to be here living like a duke.”

“But wouldn’t Paddy O’Hara be proud? You saw how my papa greeted you. Are you ill at ease when people come on so strong?”

“It’s a fact of life.” Zach stopped.

“Well, there are a number of women, older, and single, in Newport. It has always been a courtesy of the navy to dispatch a handsome young officer to escort them. To get them home safely when they’re too stiff. However, you’re quite a number, Zach, all on your own.”

“So are you,” he answered.

“But I am not a surrogate mother nor the summer replacement for a twenty-year-old sweetheart with whom you are very angry.”

“Ben talks too much . . .”

“Ben, indeed. Newport bleeds gossip no less than Paris. It’s the glue that holds the bourgeois drawing rooms together.” She rallied herself.

“I am a grandmother,” she went on, “certainly old enough to be your mother, and I am married. I despise an aging woman clutching at some young cadet. How do I feel for you? Let’s have a pleasant friendship.”

She arose and he arose and they lulled their way toward the little bridge to her villa. There was a gate. The bridge crossing over was but a few feet long over a small ravine.

“I suspect,” Zach said, “you are trying to spare my pride. You think I am too clumsily inexperienced.”

“All men are clumsily inexperienced,” she said, “but none quite so clever as you, Zach.”

“And I make you pleasantly nervous.”

“Pleasantly.”

Zach took her beneath her arms and lifted her so their eyes were level and his lips found hers and they maneuvered them until they discovered a softly sealed position and worked them back and forth, together now, half of forever, then he let her down to her feet.

Lilly leaned on him, dazed, and tapped his chest. Her defenses had been shredded. She whirled out of his grasp.

“You are so—!”

“What?”

“So damned American. You are a Yankee bastard!”

“The summer is half done, Lilly. You are beautiful and I want you.”

“I’m shaking all over, Zach,” she gasped between kisses. “You saw right through me, you beautiful Yankee bastard!”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Christ,” Zach said, “we have a logistical problem. I have to go back to retrieve my hat and sword and Major Ben and say good-bye.”