Crazy in Love - Luanne Rice - Mass Market Paperback

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. &qRice, Luanne is the author of 'Crazy in Love - Luanne Rice - Mass Market Paperback' with ISBN 9780449217542 and ISBN 044921754X.