Rapture

The turning point came in January. Connecticut was experiencing particularly bad weather that month, and Georgianne was growing restless. She complained about the cold, the house, and the loneliness. She still liked her work, and she was happy about Bonnie's progress at Harvard, but otherwise she was coming to dislike the way she lived. Her friends were well intentioned, but she hated being their special project. She was tired of gratuitous advice and she had no stomach for the ritual of being in traduced to single men, none of whom aroused any response in her. She wasn't at all sure she was capable of responding to anyone, but at night, alone, she began to want someone in her life. Georgianne didn't say these things to Jeff in so many words, but he was certain that he understood her meaning perfectly.

His time was coming, and he knew it. He started to plan another trip to Danbury. February, he thought, would be right. It was usually as bad as January in terms of the weather, and even worse psychologically. February was the bottom of the pit of winter, when spring still seems still seems impossibly far away. Georgianne would feel low and blue. He would arrive at exactly the right moment, in the nick of time, and convince her to come out to Los Angeles for a visit. At his expense, of course, unless she absolutely insisted on paying her own way. There wasn't the slightest doubt in his mind that if he could just get her to California, she would want to stay. She would stay.

Jeff was certain that his elaborate, grand scenario had reached its final phase. He thought of it as a very natural progression geared to the seasons of the earth, and he felt he was on the verge of a remarkable achievement. When it is complete, he told himself, I will have plucked Georgianne from the past, transformed her life utterly and mine as well, and saved two people who were going nowhere without even realizing it. And all because he had finally learned how to read and follow his deepest instincts. It was extraordinary how the whole thing had started and grown. A whim had taken over the personal destinies of several people. A gesture of curiosity and half buried longing had snowballed, gaining the momentum of an irresistible force. It gave Jeff a feeling of almost godlike power. The only thing that bothered him was the fact that he couldn't share this knowledge with anyone-for who else on this planet had gone to such lengths for the love of a woman? Jeff was now unique in his own eyes. At the center of this transformation was Sean's killing, which he regarded as the one true act of his life. Even now, months later, it had a magical, religious significance: it was an act of transubstantiation.

Late in January, before Jeff could announce his plans for another trip east, the change in Georgianne became more pronounced. She wouldn't stay on the phone talking as long as she had previously. She always sounded tired, and sometimes his calls actually woke her from sleep. She worked full time at the nursery school now, came home dead tired, and went to bed early. Jeff didn't know how to deal with this new development. It was just until June, Georgianne told him. She liked the work, she wanted the extra money, and, besides, it kept her mind off other things. He saw that she was doing what he had done years before-she was deliberately losing herself in her job. But he didn't know how to talk her out of it, or even if it was a good idea to try.

On the plus side, it seemed to show that Georgianne was taking charge of her life, finding a new strength and sense of purpose. Work was a way of buying time to heal. But there were negative aspects too. The long telephone talks with Jeff were no longer quite so important to her. She didn't need them the way she had earlier. Now they were friendly, brief chats-nothing more. They left Jeff feeling increasingly removed from her.

Georgianne was still vague about her plans. She was saving money. She was thinking seriously of selling the house in the summer, but then again, she might not. A condominium in the Danbury area was a possibility, but only if she decided she really wanted to stay on at the nursery school. Boston was the other alternative, and one that she admitted was attractive. She could go back to school there, take some night courses, and also find a job. Bonnie would be nearby. A city offered social and cultural distractions, and many opportunities to find a new direction for her life. There were a lot of things to be weighed and considered, and she was still far from sure what to do.

This was what Jeff had expected, in a way. Georgianne was beginning to see the various possibilities that lay before her, and she was taking a healthy interest in them. But it was happening quite apart from him, which was not what he had intended. He was disturbed and frightened at the prospect of somehow losing control.