Chapter 4
Violet had a great time when she went home to Boston with Jamie.
His family was loud, close, disorderly, chaotic, and loved to argue, tell stories, and laugh.
They welcomed Violet like an old friend.
They lived in Cambridge, and Jamie’s father was a Harvard professor and an avid baseball fan.
His mother was a philosophy professor at Boston University.
Jamie had two sisters and a brother, and was the oldest of the four, at thirty-five.
His sisters lived with boyfriends, one of whom was a minor league coach and the other a deli owner, and his brother was in law school.
None of them were married, and they were busy with their jobs and studies.
One of Jamie’s sisters was a teacher in an inner-city school and the other was a sous-chef at a fancy Boston restaurant.
She was working her way up the ladder and dreamed of owning her own restaurant one day.
They were all bright, funny, and fast, and enjoyed each other’s company, despite endless teasing and harmless insults.
They had varied interests and talents, the banter was innocent, and their exchanges fun to watch.
It was very different from Violet’s quiet home and genteel upbringing with her mother and sister.
Violet traveled a lot, looking for objects for her store, and she and the sister who was a sous-chef had a lengthy conversation about Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris.
Jamie and his father discussed the latest football scores.
Their Thanksgiving dinner was disorganized, plentiful, and delicious, with conversations back and forth across the table, laughter while Jamie kept an eye on the TV, on a football game being played in Michigan, with the sound off.
He had to write about it that night, and turn the article in by midnight.
After dinner, they all went skating together, and Jamie’s mother made hot chocolate with marshmallows for them when they got home.
It felt like a college dorm more than a family Thanksgiving, and Violet was glad she’d come, and happy she had dodged dinner the night before with the Whitfields, whom she found painfully boring.
She wore an old ski parka when they went skating, and she and Jamie skated around the outdoor rink together, holding hands.
“Thank you for putting up with my family. They’re all a little crazy and very loud,” he said. She was more restrained than his siblings, but she had fun with them.
“I love them, they’re so much fun. My mother is very polite, and my sister is very shy.
She just got engaged and her fiancé is incredibly pompous.
I’d much rather be with you than in New York.
” Violet and Jamie had met at a party given by an Israeli artist they both knew.
They both collected interesting people, Jamie particularly from the sports world.
He knew some football stars and basketball players.
Violet hung out with an arty crowd, with several Europeans.
“Do you like hockey?” he asked her, and she nodded with a smile. He had never asked her before. He had just gotten hockey as part of his regular assignment.
“Very much,” she said, grinning.
“I have tickets to a game next week at the Garden, will you come with me?”
“I’d love to,” she accepted, happy she didn’t have to go to the opera or the symphony with him, which didn’t interest either of them.
“The week after that, I’ll be in Europe on a buying trip for my store, to England and France, and I want to stop and see my grandmother in Paris.
” Everything about Violet seemed exciting to Jamie.
She had style, good taste, an eye for design, and a talent for finding unusual objects.
“She’s terrific. I always have a great time with her.
And I love Paris before Christmas. Everything is all lit up and decorated.
London too.” They stopped and had a glass of wine with some of the others, and then skated until the end of the session.
At the end, when others got off the ice, they formed a long chorus line and raced around the rink.
Violet was at the end and caught up with them.
They were all laughing and breathless when they stopped.
Violet and Jamie and his younger brother went home for their mother’s hot chocolate and his two sisters went home with their boyfriends.
“It’s nice the way you all get along,” she commented.
“We used to fight like demons when we were kids. We’ve gotten better as we get older,” Jamie said proudly.
“My sister and I are close now too,” Violet said.
She was sleeping in Jamie’s boyhood room with all his trophies, and he was sleeping in a bunk room his parents had set up when they were kids, and that they still used when the house was full, as it was over Thanksgiving.
Jamie liked coming home too. He missed Sunday dinners with the family, now that he lived in New York.
Their Sunday dinners were legendary, everyone brought something, and they all helped cook. He had told Violet about them.
Jamie’s parents had gone to bed, and his brother went upstairs shortly after they got home.
Violet and Jamie sat in front of the fire for a long time, talking about life and sports and their ambitions.
Jamie wanted to be an important sportswriter one day, for a prestigious newspaper, but he didn’t feel ready for that yet, he was still enjoying reporting for the Daily News.
It wasn’t as sedate, and he had more freedom about what he wrote.
And Violet was more and more drawn to interior design.
She wanted to keep the store and use it as a decorating resource.
He left her in his room and went to the spare room, while she carefully studied pictures of him in high school and college, and some of his trophies.
Judging by the trophies, he was good at all sports, and he’d been a handsome boy and still was.
He had dark hair, fair skin, and bright blue eyes, and looked English or Irish.
There were pictures of him at Oxford University in England, and she remembered he’d done a semester there.
His parents were both erudite and well read, and the fast and furious banter among his siblings was fairly highbrow.
They didn’t show off like Taylor, and they were a lot smarter.
Violet thoroughly enjoyed the time she spent with Jamie.
She thought about his parents when she turned off the light, and she found it sweet that he accepted sleeping separately so as not to upset them.
They’d already been dating for almost two years and had slept together, but she didn’t want his parents to think that she was cheap and immoral.
She was thinking about it when she heard the bedroom door creak open and then close almost silently, and she could see Jamie dimly in the moonlight.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“Do you want to come sleep in the other room with me? I’m lonely.”
She grinned at him in the dark. “Your parents will be upset if they find out,” she warned him.
“Who’s going to tell them?” he said practically. Violet thought about it for a minute and then pulled back the covers of his old single bed and grinned at him. He slipped under the covers with her and held her. He’d been barefoot and his feet were freezing.
“Your feet are like ice,” she said, trying to warm them with her own, and he kissed her. “Thank you for a lovely weekend,” she whispered to him.
“It’s not over yet,” he said, and kissed her more passionately, slipped her nightgown over her head and dropped it on the floor, and then took off his pajamas.
Their lovemaking was the best she’d ever known.
They forgot where they were for as long as it lasted, and they lay in bed naked together afterward.
“I love making love to you, Violet,” he said, sounding very young and happy when it was over.
She fell asleep with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her.
She was incredibly sexy and sensual, and the best thing about her was that she made him so happy.
They spent a great weekend and the whole family got together again on Saturday night for another big meal, and they all helped to cook it.
She hated to leave on Sunday, and thanked his parents profusely for letting her stay with them on Thanksgiving and share the holiday with them.
His parents assured her they loved having her and hoped she’d come back soon.
As she and Jamie rode the train back to New York, Violet wondered what her mother would think of them.
She was sure that she would find them intelligent and fun.
They were all highly educated, and though they were a little loud and unruly for Dominique, on the whole, she thought her mother might like them.
They were honest, open, straightforward, and kind.
She had met Jamie several times and thought he was a bright, interesting guy, although Violet knew that his family was a little more exuberant than he was.
As far as he was concerned, he thought Violet fit in perfectly.
She seemed to be able to adapt to any situation and any kind of people.
There was nothing snobbish about her, which he liked a lot since he wasn’t a snob either.
They went back to her apartment and he spent the night, as he often did. He stayed at her apartment more than his own, but they kept their own apartments in case they wanted time to themselves. It was the perfect arrangement for both of them.
She had called her mother twice from Boston to check in with her, and make sure she wasn’t lonely. Dominique said she was fine and had work to do. Violet said she’d had fun, but didn’t rave about the weekend. She didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings.
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