Something is different, Jeff realized as he talked. In May, she had listened and expressed a certain interest, but this was different. Now, he felt she really wanted to learn about him, what he did and how he lived. It was because Sean was dead and fading into a memory. Her mind was no longer complicated by the presence of Sean. Georgianne doesn't know it yet, he thought, but she's already beginning to see me in a new light.
When it came time to leave, Georgianne thanked Jeff for being such good company and for taking her to the gathering at the Maddox house.
"My return to society, I guess," she joked, but there was a measure of sadness in her eyes.
"It'll get better. You'll see."
"I know," she said wearily. "I know."
Jeff hugged her and held her close to him for several long minutes. He stroked her hair and kissed her lightly on the forehead, but was afraid to do anything else. Although Georgianne didn't break away, he could feel the same hesitancy in her.
"It's all right," he whispered. It's just a line in the sand. We'll cross it soon, and then I'll hold you safe all through the night, every night. "It's all right."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
On the last Saturday of his trip Jeff had an early lunch with Georgianne at her house. She made steak sandwiches, and after the meal they got into his rental car and drove east on 1-84. It was to be a day out, one that Jeff hoped would serve as a brief swing through the past and on into the future.
"I haven't been to Millville since Mom closed the house and moved down to Tampa," Georgianne said.
Two pleasant long weeks had passed, and Jeff didn't know what they added up to as far as he and Georgianne were concerned. He'd been through a lot. He felt drained, mentally, emotionally, and even physically, and, although he had enjoyed all his time with Georgianne, he wondered if he shouldn't have more than nice memories and continued hope to show for it.
He had seen her every single day. She worked five mornings a week at the nursery school, so he would meet her in the afternoon or evening, or both. They would go out to eat, or stop somewhere for a few drinks, or she would cook something at home for him. They took drives through the countryside of northwestern Connecticut. They visited an antique shop owned by a friend of Georgianne, and they looked in at a gallery, where Jeff compared the art on exhibit unfavorably with her sketches. They looked at the lovely old houses in villages like Roxbury, Washington, Bridgewater, Gaylordsville, Kent, and Cornwall. Most of all, they talked-and it was good. There was no question in Jeffs mind that Georgianne was making a real effort to put her personal tragedy behind her. Every day he thought he saw some small sign that she was getting better.
He knew he had a lot to do with it, simply by being there, keeping her busy and drawing her out. But it was a strain in many ways, and he thought, ironically, that getting back to work in California would be like taking a rest.
One of the strains he had to cope with was the need to rein himself in when he was with Georgianne. His instinct was to be more aggressive about burying the past and Sean, and to be more open about his feelings for Georgianne. But he was terrified of upsetting everything he was working for with her, and so he was constantly on guard against himself. He had the pleasure of being with her, but not the full pleasure. He had her to himself for large chunks of time, but always within carefully drawn limits.
Georgianne liked being with Jeff. She felt safe with him, and it was a time when she needed more than anything else to feel safe. He was a distraction, an old friend and good company. In his own somewhat awkward, glancing way, he made her think about things she knew she had to deal with, and he did so inoffensively.
After they'd been to Burt and Bobbie's house, for instance, Jeff had mentioned widowhood and remarriage. He probably didn't even know what he'd done, but he'd made her think for the first time since Sean's death about her sex life. Georgianne had been forced to admit to herself that a significant part of the awful loneliness she felt, missing Sean, was purely sexual. She had no idea what she would do about it in the coming weeks and months, but at least she had a better understanding of the problem now, and that represented progress. The funny part about Jeff's helping her to see this was that her feelings for him were not at all sexual.
Jeff, in idle moments, occupied himself with the ever-changing numbers that testified to his love for Georgianne. She had never mentioned the subject of his staying at her house, so he kept his room at the Ramada and watched the bill accumulate. When he added in the car-rental charges, the round-trip air fares, all the meals and miles, it came to an impressive sum of money. He was pleased. Numbers were symbols, and the larger they became, the happier he felt. Movie stars and rock singers lived like this, falling in love in Honolulu, breaking up in Vail, reconciling in Saint Tropez. Jeff knew that he and Geor gianne would never live that recklessly, but they would enjoy the same freedom-it was part of the new life he was creating for both of them.
He turned off 1-84 a few miles before Waterbury and drove the back roads into Millville. They swung by the high school, where a crowd of cars in the parking lot suggested a football game in progress, although the field wasn't visible from the road. They circled the green, another place where many hours had been idled away, and they passed the town library, one of Jeffs favorite refuges in adolescence. The library was freighted with erotic history for him. It was where he'd first started looking up girl's skirts. Thro of his former girlfriends had worked part time at the library. The long dark aisles of books, especially the upstairs stacks, were wonderful places for useful peeking, fast kisses, and an occasional grope.
After a quick run through the center of Millville, they headed south on the New Haven Road. When they were approaching the Brewer house, Jeff asked Georgianne if she wanted to stop and say hello.
"No, don't bother," she replied definitely.
He took it as a good sign: Georgianne didn't want to go through the inevitable explanations of Sean's death.
"Miss the old homestead?" he asked as the Slaton driveway appeared ahead on the left.
"No ... not really." A moment later, she continued. it was a good house and I loved growing up there, but you can't live in the past."
He said nothing, but he felt a shiver of excitement. She was looking to the future. If she could say that about her family home ... But it didn't occur to him that her words might have any bearing on his own life.
They reached New Haven thirty minutes later, and Jeff went to the parking lot in the center of Broadway. He and Georgianne spent a while browsing through the Yale Co-op and looking in the windows of some of the fancy clothing stores nearby.
Jeff still had a certain fondness for New Haven. In high school, it had had a vague prestige value: if you could take your date thirty miles to New Haven, find your way to some worthwhile joint-a jazzy coffee bar, a folk club, a shady head shop that sold nitrous oxide-you were a cut above the jerks who couldn't find their way beyond the creature-feature drive-in. It wasn't New York or Boston, but in those days and at that age New Haven had been the first step toward some imaginary sophistication.
And this, Jeff thought as he and Georgianne strolled along York Street, is the date we should have had back then....
The air was crisp and sweet, the light sharp, the afternoon purely October. They walked through Yale courtyards and side streets. They said little, but seemed content to enjoy the day in each other's presence. Later, they went to a Truffaut double bill, Stolen Kisses and The Man Who Loved Women, and then had a white clam sauce pizza and cold beer at Pepe's. It was all as effortless as a dream, a dream of the future by way of the past, and if it was the best day of the entire two weeks, Jeff attributed that to the fact that they'd come a distance from Foxrock. When Georgianne moved away from there permanently, every day would be like this one.