O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [92]
When Nini left, Amanda and Dixie Jane went into hugs of unrestrained exuberance and ordered up banana splits to be served on the veranda. They went over a few ideas for the summer and the incoming tutors. Amanda was so damned glad she was here.
They had parted happy with each other at the Constable farm, and Amanda realized Dixie Jane had made a mark on her.
Amanda got to thinking about Amanda. She really had missed Dixie Jane and wondered about the new role . . . big sister . . . extra mother . . . perhaps an announcement during the upcoming winter season. Dixie Jane made it comfortable.
Actually, her name was Virginia Jane. She had a dog named Dixie who had gone to dog heaven when Virginia was only five. So great was her grief, she changed her name to Dixie in remembrance of her first great friend.
The Constable family, Virginians all, felt the name suited, so Dixie it was, sort of a last hurrah for the Old South.
“But I don’t want to go horseback riding,” Dixie Jane emoted. “That’s all I ever do at Grandpa’s farm.”
“You’ve never ridden on a beach,” Amanda said.
“I prefer to sail, or rock-climb, or simply meditate. I don’t want to go riding.”
“I guess I’ll have to find some other little girl to give these to,” Amanda said, holding up boy’s riding britches.
“Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . let’s go riding!”
Once Amanda hefted Dixie up into the saddle, the girl never wanted to come down again. And when they sailed, Dixie wanted to sail over the horizon. And when they played a duet at the piano, she dreamed she was giving a concert.
They raced the beaches at sunset, wild rides to Valhalla, and they found the coves of the Hebrides. They skinny-dipped at night and read Mark Twain on their bellies before the fire.
Glen Constable had feared that his daughter might become a lifelong victim of the divorce. She had gone from a chattery little butterfly to a doll-clutching, whiny, very lonely person.
Particularly after Rudolph Dorfman became a caller. He tried to be nice to Dixie, but she knew the only reason he was doing so was so that he could get close to her mother.
His beard was black and scratchy. All his family in Richmond had scratchy beards; even the women scratched.
Mr. Dorfman tried to make jokes that were so bad even he didn’t think they were funny. Rudolph Dorfman and his scratchy brothers had a big department store in Richmond. He offered to let Dixie Jane take anything she wanted. She only took a few hair ribbons so as not to make him feel bad, but she hoped her mother got the message.
Nini didn’t. Oh, Mother will be in Asbury Park during the last half of August! How charming!
When Glen Constable came to Newport on his weekends and otherwise, he could scarcely believe the change in his daughter and he was grateful for the deepening relationship between Dixie and Amanda.
When Daddy left, did those two have fun!
Newport was like a seven-layer Viennese cake, from the grandeur of the family names to the beaches on which every sailor wanted to be washed up.
Yachts of the New Yorkers took over. In due course, the New Yorkers would probably own the yacht club as well.
. . . came their great moment every day when the sun went under the yardarm at the yacht club and the cannon boomed, nary a moment late, the gentlemen’s bar was open for business. Boom! crackled the cannon, and in came the skippers, and conversation grew giddy after one drink . . . and a number of toppers.
At the bottom layer of the cake there was a pleasure park all lit up and a plunking banjo at a black nightclub on the wharf. By day the water was filled with tiny one-sail dinghies fit for two persons and beaches where some of the women paddled in the waves and oodles of sweet shops and saloons filled up with horny sailors.
Dixie Jane and Amanda spent a great deal of their days away from Tobermory.
Their favorite fun was to take a sunset ferry cruise around the bay, fill up on hot dogs, lick off mustard, and slurp a bottomless sundae. The dance floor would fill up with couples